A Bunch of 50s in the Pool

I've been getting bored with my swimming, so I decided to bust out an old workout earlier this week: I was going to do a bunch of 50s! I decided this during my warm-up, and I figured I'd do 30x50. Then after starting the workout, I told myself I could do 35x50.

I didn't look back to previous versions of this workout before I was at the pool, but I THOUGHT I had it pretty much memorized. So I told myself that I'd do sets of 5 50s that looked like this:

1. 50 easy
2. 50 moderate, breathing every 3rd stroke
3. 25 hard / 25 easy
4. 50 moderate, breathing every 5th stroke
5. 50 all out.

10 sec rest between the 50s, and 35 sec between the sets of 5

I quickly learned that I started with "easy" meaning "easy FOR A 50" but quickly turned that into "just EASY." My rest time also needed to include a bit of that first 50.

In the past, I remember the 2nd 50 of "breathing every 3rd stroke" feeling just like "normal" swimming, but I had a little trouble keeping to breathing every 3rd stroke this time. I've been breathing every 2 strokes a lot over the last year whenever I need a little extra breath, and I found myself defaulting to that sometimes - "oh, I'm running out of air a bit... I guess I'll only take 2 strokes here before getting some air." No! Oops!

The biggest surprise while in the pool was how hard the "breathing every 5th stroke" was. I felt like I was being tortured during my first rep of that! Literally! I nearly had a mini freak-out because I was quite uncomfortable with my face in the water as I was running out of air! This workout was GOOD for me.

I took splits for every 50, and here they are, with the 5th in each row being the "all out" 50s:

43, 44, 46, 45, 41
44, 45, 45, 47, 40
45, 46, 46, 45, 40
46, 45, 45, 44, 40
45, 47, 45, 44, 41
48, 45, 47, 44, 42
49, 46, 47, 44, 42

Average "all out" 50: 0:40.86

Swim pace over the 1 hour workout.


Highlighting the 7 sets of 5 50s.

Afterwards, while logging my workout, I looked back to other times I'd done 50s like this. I THOUGHT the last time was pre-pandemic, but I did this a year ago and kept ALL of my fast 50s under 40 sec (when NONE of my fast 50s were under 40 this week).

And pre-pandemic (6+ years ago), I did this workout with my fast 50s averaging under 0:37.

Looking back farther, I did this workout 7 years ago with all of my fast 50s being between 0:35 and 0:37. Ouch. I've lost a lot of speed in the pool over the years. Swimming once/week sure isn't making me any faster, and my workouts have been trending LONGER and SLOWER over time as well. So I'm missing out on that more explosive speed.

p.s. For reference, here's the "real" workout - it's what I said about that workout once I looked up what I was told to do years ago:

Main Set: 50x50 (aka 10 rounds of 5x50) All on 50” or 10” rest (50” is lowest interval, take 10” if you’re touching the wall past 45”), then 30 secs rest between sets of 5.

• #1: Easy
• #2: Breathe every 3rd stroke
• #3: 25 fast/25 easy
• #4: Breathe every 5th stroke
• #5: FAST!