Conditioning your body to being able to sprint in certain parts of a race while then recovering and assuming your regular speed and rhythm can benefit you greatly in a race scenario as there will be times (race start, turning buoy, finish etc..) where a faster pace will possibly be required.
Drill: Fartlek: Training is a great drill to imitate a race environment where you set out at a constant pace but say every 5 lengths you sprint a length. The following 4 lengths are resumed at the initial pace before the 10th length is again sprinted. This is carried on until the session is completed. Your sprinting ability can be improved in further sessions by increasing the number of lengths that you sprint (say 2 lengths out of every 5 etc..).
