Stroke Rate -- What is Normal?

klassman

Is there a forum featuring a discussion of stroke rate? I did a couple of searched but didn't find much guidance.

Background -- I am used to measuring training/races in terms of time per 100 yards or simply total distance e.g. 3x1000 yards with 20 seconds rest. I did my first marathon swim last weekend and afterward was soaking up as much information as I could from all the other swimmers. There was a lot of talk about stroke rates.

You can see from the chart below, produced from data on my Garmin watch during a nine mile ocean swim, that my stroke rate was in the mid 30s. Is that low, high, average? Is it highly variable depending on conditions?

Any pointers are welcome.

Chrisgreene

Maybe it's just me but I don't think stroke rate is all that important. I value stroke efficiency and have no idea what my stroke rate is. Of course this is coming from a newbie who never heard of Marathon Swimming a year ago, did my first piloted swim last October, swam SCAR this past May, and now swimming a 30K in 9 days. And I'm not cerebral enough to think about things like stroke count. My thought process is "just swim".

swimmer25k

Whatever feels right. Your body will default to what it likes. Past US lady greats like Bambi Bowman, Karen Burton, and Briley Bergen had pretty high turnovers. Bambi was often in the 90/min range. Mine was usually in the low 70s.

loneswimmer

@klassman, I assume that's measuring one arm, so your stroke rate is twice that. Because a stroke rate of 30ish would be...unusual.

dpm50

I don't measure mine or expect my kayaker to do so, but last year my coach accompanied Mr on a 3 hour open water swim and he told me it was around 65 to start off and around 60 near the end. I was in a river so started upstream and finished downstream. But all I know is that he didn't think it was a significant drop. I went faster downstream as one might expect and maybe the current affected my strike count?

evmo

klassman said:
You can see from the chart below, produced from data on my Garmin watch during a nine mile ocean swim, that my stroke rate was in the mid 30s. Is that low, high, average? Is it highly variable depending on conditions?

It's not really about whether your stroke rate is high/low/average, compared to others. What matters is whether your stroke rate is efficient for your body, for a given level of effort. Your efficient stroke rate depends on fixed factors such as your height, arm span, and hand size, and also dynamic factors such as effort (usually inversely proportional to intended distance) and your conditioning level.

For me, that's about 60 for 6+ hour pace, 64 for 10km pace, 66-68 for mile pace, and 70 for 400m. If I'm in really good shape, those numbers are ~2 strokes higher.

PS, double the numbers from your Garmin to get true stroke rate.