Why and how to develop your swimming pacing skills

Your pacing may have more impact on your overall swim time than your fitness. Learn how to control it for faster swimming.

Swimmers who want to get faster tend to obsess about two things: their fitness and their swimming technique. But there are other factors that also determine how fast you move through the water. In open water, for example, your navigation skills and ability to cope with rough conditions can make a huge difference.

Another frequently overlooked and therefore underdeveloped factor among recreational swimmers is pacing.

Pacing is the ability to control your speed and optimise it for the length of swim you are doing.

Elite swimmers tend to hold an even pace through their races. Look at the split times per 50m of Bobby Finke when he set a new 1500m world record at the Paris Olympics. Apart from the first 50m, where he benefited from the dive, and the final 50m where he sprinted, he swam every 50m between 28.68 and 29.49 seconds. That’s a difference of less than a second between his fastest and slowest.

He also “negative split”, which means he swam the second half of the race faster than the first (7:14.75 for the second half compared with 7:15.88 for the first).

Pacing is not determined by your fitness

In contrast, many recreational swimmers start their races fast and finish slower.

You might argue that is because they are not fit enough to hold a steady pace for the full length of the race. But even if your fitness isn’t good, you can still have good pacing. You simply have to start at a speed that’s sustainable for you.

The consequences of getting it wrong can be painful and will cost you time. In some races, I’ve tried to keep up with faster swimmers for as long as possible as an experiment. While the first part of these swims was spectacular, the latter was a painful shambles. I ended up swimming much slower than if I’d stuck to a sensible pace.

Pacing, like technique, is a skill that can be practised and improved. It’s easier to do this in a pool where you can accurately measure time and distance. After a warm-up, try these.

Training sets to practise pacing

• 10 x 100m with 10s rest after each. Time each swim and try to do each one at the same speed.
• 1 x 100m +10s rest, 1 x 200m + 20s rest, 1 x 300m +30s rest and 1 x 400m. Time each swim and try to maintain your pace as the distance increases.

To achieve pace consistency, you may need to start at a speed that feels too slow. If you repeat these or similar sets regularly, your pacing skills will improve. You will learn how an even-paced swim feels. When you apply that in an event, you should swim faster overall, even if your fitness and technique are unchanged.

Additional pacing tips

• We don’t all have the luxury of being able to do pool races where we can check our splits. However, if you frequently find yourself being left behind towards the end of outdoor swims, it’s likely that you started too fast.
• In a long swim, if you feel you can go faster, gently ratchet up the pace. Don’t make a sudden change (except for tactical reasons perhaps). Make a small change. If that feels OK, make another small change.
• If you are suffering on a long swim because you started too fast, ease off as soon as you recognise this. It’s usually more effective to drop the pace near the beginning and try to pick it up again later than pushing hard until you run out of gas and limping to the end.
• In tough conditions or against a current, your speed will be slower. Judge your pace by your effort, not by how fast you are moving. Think of your pace as a feeling, rather than a speed.
• If you’re lucky enough to have someone monitoring your stroke rate, you may be able to use this as an objective measure of pace. Get to know what your sustainable stroke rate is.
• The most common problem is starting too fast. Starting too slowly is rare. The best way to check is to race in a pool where your splits are monitored. Alternatively, if you find yourself moving past lots of swimmers towards the end or an open water event, you may have started too slow. If this is you, try starting faster and see what happens.
• On very long swims, nutrition is important. You may slow down because you’ve run out of fuel rather than misjudged your pacing. Learn about fuelling long swims here.