Hi!
I joined the USMS FLOG (love the acronym...) at the end of January. I am excited about the prizes for various milestones! However, I noticed some people are already at 100 or 200 miles for the year. Holy moly! I thought I swam a lot! Are any of these people reading? Why such high yardage? How do you structure your week? Singles, doubles?
Intrigued.
Allison
I agree with you Jim! But I imagine if you swim with an age group team, like I do, and many others, that you can easily get in 6-7,000 in a single workout (about 2 hours) So I suppose that's 5 miles a day. But how many grown ups with jobs, kids and mortgages have time to train more than that? Even triathletes limit their swim time because they have to run and bike! And perhaps you're right on the second part - those California guys might be a little off their rockers! :)
People who spend 2 hours a day practicing an instrument don't get asked, "Do you read?" "What do you do about work/life balance?"
Yeah, because most of them are professional musicians!
My goodness, I certainly didn't mean to sound judgemental! I can easily imagine swimming 2 1/2 hours a day - occasionally. I suppose if someone is unemployed, i.e. retired, you might have that kind of time. And stamina. However, as Jim said, to knock out 20 miles in the weekend, that means: "A 20 mile swim is 35,200 yards. To put it in more conventional pool swimming terms, this is 352 x 100s. Now let us say that some of these guys can hold this pace on 1:20 and take no bathroom breaks or stop for a sip of water or a bite of food.
352 x 100 on 1:20 would take 469.20 minutes to complete, or 7.82 hours."
Yes, I spend a lot of time reading. And swimming. But I don't swim 8 hours on a weekend, EVER. More power to you, especially if you do it on a regular basis.
And OP, I looked at results from 2012 and the top two from both 35-39 and 40-44 blogged their workouts and posted their training plans (here or elsewhere).
I did blog my yardage last year but I'm pretty sure I ended up first due to the second place guy having shoulder surgery. Here are my random GTD thoughts:
* GTD is a good thing. It encourages people to swim and try to swim more. Some people might take it overboard but I have no idea what their situation is so I'm assuming everyone is fitting in what is best for them.
* There was no prize van that showed up Jan 1st this year after I finished first in the men's 40-44 age division. I had to throw my own pretend celebration. It was awesome.
* GTD is about the free swimsuit at 500 miles. I'm cheap. I like free stuff. The rest of the miles are gravy.
* In regards to the free Nike swimsuit - Attention TYR, Speedo, etc... I have NOT worn my Nike suit yet. There's still time to sign me to a sponsorship deal. I have a meet this weekend so now would be a good time to work something out.... seriously... call me!
* Swimming 800 miles last year did not make me fast. I'm a little faster than last year but I probably could have obtained the same results with 700 or 600 miles. A lot of people my age are a lot faster than I am with far fewer miles logged.
* I like the yardage I do. I begged my parents to let me swim on a year round team when I was a kid. They didn't let me for good reason. For one, I was slow. For another, I begged to do a zillion other things as well. Shame on them for not deciphering the one true thing that I "really" wanted to do. I have childhood issues. Swimming helps.
Yes, the CA "nutcases" swim the Catalina Channel, the English Channel, the Maui Channel, etc. They love the challenge!
Assuming the miles reported are correct what is wrong with deciding to do these long distances? If people have the time and want to swim these challenges I think it's very inspiring. Let's give these true athletes some respect.
Yeah, because most of them are professional musicians!
Not at all! You must be thinking of "medicine."
I will make the general point explicitly: people who decide to engage in an activity daily (especially a skill-building activity, though that is not under discussion here) and use their time efficiently in such pursuit are not nuts, psychos, skimping on their family's needs, have issues, and so forth, as this and another recent thread implied. I regret that Go the Distance should inspire such a conversation.
Assuming the miles reported are correct what is wrong with deciding to do these long distances? If people have the time and want to swim these challenges I think it's very inspiring. Let's give these true athletes some respect.
Thank you. Several Channel crossers are members of USMS and post here, though most have migrated to MarathonSwimmers.org.
Just some quick calculations--let's say these top 1% folks are swimming two hours a day, seven days a week. That would conceivably be in the ballpark of 8000 yards a day (assuming they are swimming mostly free, and swimming moderate paced sets) and 56,000 yards a week. At 56,000 yards a week, that would put these folks at ~364,000 yards on the year (6.5 weeks x 56,000 yards). That comes out to ~207 miles year to date. That seems pretty achievable to me. To note, I'm not one of those folks, seeing as I'm only sitting at about 60 miles so far.
Still, going back to John K, his results seem pretty out there. He hit 200 miles on 1/30, and hit 311 on 2/13? 111 miles in 14 days? That would imply that he averaged ~13,950 yards a day. While that is certainly theoretically feasible, I personally find it a stretch to think that someone can spend 3-4 hours (or more, depending on their pace) in the pool day in and day out.
We've got an English Channel, former pro OW swimmer on our team, and a very heavy day for him tops out at around a 14,000, and he can't hit yardages like that every day. His average workout is around a 10,000, I believe. On the other end of the spectrum, the longest pool workout he's told me about was a 22,000 (10x1000, 8x1500), but he did that years ago.
Not to disparage any of the high mileage GTD swimmers, by any means! I just find it very peculiar that they can devote as much time in the pool day in and day out as their recorded distances would seem to require.
