Race Pace & Target Splits

Sorting lots of papers in preparation for moving apartments I came across two pieces of paper from way, way back. They detailed target race splits and some results from a GBR SC Championships in the mid-1980's. I seem to recall they were held in Cheltenham or Gloucester, anyway somewhere picturesque in the south west.

During the 1980's I was privileged to coach some outstanding age-group swimmers in Britain. They went on to Olympic representation, world top-10 rankings, World Championships finals, Commonwealth medals etc.

The basis of their programming is annually discussed in detail at the SNZ School of Coaching; aerobic-based, multi-stroke development, which is the basis of the XLR8 system used for AG selection and rankings throughout New Zealand. Check into the School of Coaching for the detail.

The physiological basis for the programme design is based on an eastern-European system developed in the USSR which targets main training emphases each day of the micro-cycle. If the physiological preparation is on-target then the race performance should be predictable. Read that sentence again. If the physiological preparation is on-target then the race performance should be predictable. As they said in Ocean's 13, 'It plays,' doesn't it?

Back in 1982 Dr. Ernie Maglischo published his watershed book 'Swimming Faster.' In the previous article on this blog I gave the opinion that it was the best of the three series he published under the same themed title.

Maglischo analysed the splits of the world record holders and other USA national champions and determined patterns in the way they split their races. many coaches have done this and arrived at various conclusions. Probably the most ubiquitous is the one which assigns fixed percentages to each 'leg' of an individual medley. Quite frankly that is the most ridiculous analysis since someone took a lot of dollars to conclude 'Men are faster than women and freestyle is faster than backstroke' I kid you not, by the way, that conclusion was actually reached. Medley splits must depend on the individual prowess of the swimmer on each discreet stroke, not on an 'ideal' percentage of the total race time; it's common sense but apparently that's not very common.

Maglischo's system has two very important things going for it; it's simple and it works. Couldn't be better really. He based it on the swimmer's PB for distances shorter than the race in question so the advice for a 100m freestyle is split the first 50 one second slower than your PB for 50 and split the second 50 one and a half to two seconds slower than the first. Let's say a swimmer has a 50 PB of 25.0. The target splits would be 26.0 and 27.5/28.0 for a total of 53.5/54.0. Of course the first 50 is timed to the feet so to go within one second of the 50 PB and have energy left to back up a good second 50 the approach and execution of the turn had better be exemplary - some swimmers take more than a second to get their feet on the wall so they'd be in big trouble.

Looking at the 200 IM Maglischo advises the fly to be fly PB+1.0, backstroke to be back PB+3.0, breaststroke to be breaststroke PB+5.0/6.0 and the freestyle to be freestyle PB+4.0. Those are all based on standing start PB's so the allowance for no dive on back, breast and free is already built in to the targets. Check out the original targets and patterns (usual advice, click for a bigger view):


There have been rule changes since 1982 - underwater distance of starts and turns, no-hand touch on backstroke and fly kick on breaststroke start and turns. The only change which affects the split strategy is the no-hand touch on backstroke because the split is now measured to the feet whereas it used to be measured to the hand touch. I have adjusted this table to account for that difference onbackstroke and IM:


Most coaches who calculate these end up with predictions which are significantly faster than their swimmers have actually done in races. This 'error' has two possible causes; either the swimmer had paced the races really badly (very common here) or the swimmer is not trained well enough to hold the pace described by the target splits. If the swimmer is trained well and they control the race strategy around these targets it is amazing how accurate they are. Check out these targets and results for two of my swimmers from the GBR SC nationals:


The correlation is amazing. On some of the races the swimmer was faster than their pre-championships PB at the 50 and the splits were recalculated for the final. There are some remarkable fits between the target and the actuals; male 200 fly target 2:05.0, actual 2:04.77, 100 back heat target 1:01.4 for a 1:01.32, final target 1:00.8 for a 1:00.83, 400 IM target 4:26.8 for a 4:26.83 coming in from a PB of 4:33.08. The girl was just as close; 200 back target 2:25.7, actual 2:25.56, 800 free target 8:58.0 actual 8:57.20 against a pre-champs PB of 9:08.0.

Try it. Get your swimmers fit and teach them pace control. then get your calculator out and set high targets.