RE that linked to theory (longer swimmers have less drag, and by a huge amount in the quoted figures), and, as mentioned above, I did know that, all other thigs being equal, long boats are faster than short ones. However, I was looking at all the kids in my lad’s squad and I realised the obvious, things are not all equal. Most of the shorter swimmers were also smaller in other respects, including, most importantly, cross sectional area.
I covered my new hearing aids on the ‘Purchases’ thread.
However, while I was there, I got a pair of custom fit swimming ear plugs made.
These are made the same way as the hearing aids, with a mould taken of your inner ear.
(Blue = Left ear + Red = Right)
Miles bigger than the ear plugs I’d been using.
(Orange = Hopeless, Light blue = Not bad, but ear still filled with water at times.)
But they sit flush in the ear like so (excuse the poor photo).
I’ve only used them once, as it is my swimming club’s summer break, but they work well. 
They were £58 from Boots.
Cheers, Paul. 
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So, I bookmarked this as was fascinated, and 4 years later I’ve finally looked it up to reply to.
The study was by Peter Riegel in 1983 (“Athletic Records and Human Performance”). He took the world records at the time for swimming, cycling, running, speed and roller skating, skiing, walking, and human powered flight, and looked at how time drops off over distance. He realised all sports followed a linear pattern when you made a logarithm of both time and distance.
The equations quoted by hammer spawned all the race calculators that we see, typically used for running. I don’t know if Macmillan etc are still based on the Riegel exponent, or if a newer model has replaced it.
Importantly this was for distances between 3.5 and 240 minutes, with the relationship breaking down either side of this. So there’s the first flaw in using it with 100-200m as the shorter swim distance.
These are the fatigue indexes from the records at the time:
So male and female swimmers had a fatigue constant of 1.03. It was runners who were around the 1.06-1.07 mark. I haven’t checked if current records still match the same numbers. I also can’t really see any validation, or current use of it now. And given it was based on records set by different people, it may not apply the same to times by one individual? (Although that’s mitigated by calculating your own fatigue index and applying that rather than standard calculators that go off one time and apply an average 1.06 example)
Part 2
My fatigue index today was 1.079 based on 100m (yes I read the paper after) and 1000m.
So clearly I’m relatively weaker at endurance.
But what do I do with that? Does that automatically mean the obvious, that I need to train longer intervals?
As I already do less than 1% work faster than 100m pace, mostly long aerobic ironman pace stuff, and today’s 100m effort was 5s faster than the best 100 I’ve done in a rare harder training session (because they’d be sets of 4-8 so not managing an all out effort).
When should we train to our strengths, rather than our weaknesses?
Questions I don’t have answers to even if some thoughts. Could have just DMd hammer after all these years to ask if he had better understanding of the decay index than the one paper I’ve read, but thought others may chip in ± follow along 
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Trying to think about that makes my head hurt
Going for a cuppa instead
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Who was it that a few months ago posted about a 3800m session made up of 500, 2x 400, 3x 300, 4x 200, 5x 100, 6x 50?
I did it today and wanted to say I hate you. I thought I was going to have to be fished out by the end. Was putting in some of the slowest 50m I’ve done in 18 months 
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Its quite difficult to put it all into words, but for me its just a tool to add to the armoury which seemed to give me a good idea of various levels and areas to work with triathletes. You have to remember the caveat, there are large differences in triathletes abilities, and the figures are more useful for them. For high level swimmers/swim background triathletes then i see a use, but maybe less reliant on it. Add that many swimmers are predominantly sprinters, so figures, as seen with your n=1 may indicate larger sdi (i believe Phelps based on pb was 1.13 when i looked into it between 100/200) . For my use if a triathlete has plateaued and has a 1.03 I’d potentially add more sprint stuff , as we know many are mono paced so need to work on adding more gears to their engine, but it has bilateral gains in “feel” and building swim specific strength also. If its very high, also could be in novices who overdo 50m then slowly die then id maybe see benefit in longer easy stuff. (Or maybe pacing work also)
N=1 for you yes id definitely be doing mainly aerobic with VO2 (400m pace for you) stuff as your efforts , but would always stick 4-8 take home sprints in most “easy” sessions, just to mix it up.
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Also it would be interesting to see your 400/1500 index
Interesting about running. I will try to gather some data, although its rare for kids to do much more than 300/800/1500. (Tri is all set for kids, no variety really) I dont work with enough adult triathletes but let me get some 10k/21k/42k times from some if i can.
Interesting, that advice is probably what I’ve been doing, whereas I would question if I’d need a new stimulus.
The majority of my work last season was longer sustainable sessions holding 1:15-1:20 pace between 70.3-ironman-easier RPE.
Intensity sessions were typically that VO2 stuff like 40x100 as 4 on 4 off hitting 66-68s off ~1:25.
I probably do a handful of fast 15m in 50% of sessions
I don’t think I did a single session around 68-75 pace, IE really hard 200-800s last build, and wondered if this 1.08 drop off suggested that lack of hard Z4-5 work.
I’ll happily do a 400, but not a chance I’m doing a 1500. That 1000 today was murder.
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typical swimmer 
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Aerobic is a broad term, as you know, It could be that you do need some higher level aerobic sets, rather than “Z2” building into a race < vo2 but > than LT2. I rarely have swimmers at threshold (its such an arbitrary number to estimate correctly anyway) unless its TRP for a 1500 for instance, but 200s @ just slower than 400 pace of 1:1 work rest maybe would work. Its hard to guess without seeing training / racing stats. Its one reason i like to build a “power curve” in swimming but that obviously takes time out of training (when its not swimmers actively racing regularly)
Sounds like IM training. Which one you signing up for?
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Haha no doing the two mile Serpentine in a couple of weeks so just trying to make it feel like it’s not torture by doing worse stuff before it.
One day though… maybe (if I suddenly have a grand swirling about). In which case I’m signing up for one with no jellyfish and an appropriate elevation profile
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So Copenhagen then…!
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You guys do a great job of selling it and it’s probably a good place to combine a city break, but I think I might need some of those 75 extra minutes they don’t give you at that one…
If it takes me 90mins to do the Serpentine and I have to drag myself out the water and can barely function that probably tells me it’s still a long way off
So I did this today as well as a bit of a test of what I can comfortably hold over the distance. To have any chance at Wales I’m going to have to dial everything back which is actually quite difficult to prepare for. It’s not how you would normally approach things after all.
So I had a loose plan of aiming for 1h 30, 2:15/100ish and take it from there. It worked really quite nicely and brought the set in at 1h25. More importantly felt ok at the end and upped the pace on the 50’s to 1:40/100.
I still need to crunch some Wales numbers and an overall race plan but it helps give me a starting point.
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Great effort. How do you time/manage your rests in between? I try to have a plan of shortish rests between reps of same distance and longer rest between the distances, but it usually just ends up being whatever rest I need to (a) get some space in the lane and (b) when it’s getting towards the end and I can’t feel my arms, stop crying.
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Funny you should ask that, I was half way into the 500 before realising I hadn’t given rest periods any thought. I went with 30sec after the 500, 20sec after the 400s and then 10sec after the rest.
I wouldn’t follow my advice though, I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time.
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Yeah those are far too short for me
Which probably means I’m doing the reps too quickly…?
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Did some swimming today. Even did some 100s. First one felt great and I still felt like a fairly competent swimmer. After that… 
I then did a few 50 sprints. Having some max efforts come in at a slower pace than what I used to be able to rep 200s at only 18 months ago was quite humbling. Long way back.
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When I was in Erding, I did a few lengths of the 50m outdoor pool in my boardshorts without goggles. Managed a few 50/51sec lengths. I was quite happy with that!