I am preparing for stage 1 of the 8 bridges swim in the Hudson River. It is 18.3 miles. I have been doing 4,000 yards 5 days a week, then, adding a long swim on the weekends. I plan on adding yardage to that long swim each week. My question is, what should be my yardage/mile goal for the last long swim before the race? Would it make sense to swim 2 a days? I live in Pittsburgh, Pa, so, open water swims is not an option until May...any suggestions for preparation would be welcome. Thank you. Judy
judy,
you need to be talking with people that do those kinds of events.
those that have done english channel or race around manhatten island or similar
not those of us that pee in the pool.
I cringe at the very thought of swimming in the Hudson. I grew up at a time when the river was an open sewer and one would not even go near the water's edge for the stink of it. And I was 150 miles upstream from NYC. It only got worse as you went south. It can still be a bit dicey in spots but everything below Tappan Zee gets washed by the tides.
Hi Judy. Good luck to you! That's going to be a heck of a swim. You can do it! I've done a few long swims over the past few years and have had success in a couple different ways training.
When I did Swim Around Key West, I gradually built the miles with long swims on the weekends, just like you're doing. I'd go up a bit each weekend for 3 weeks, then the 4th weekend, cut it back by about half. For instance, my Saturdays would be 4k, 5k, 6k, then back down to something like 4.5k and build up again the next 4 week cycle again. You can also consider doing it by time where you add another 15 minutes or so each week until you build up. For Key West, which is a 20k, the max I went up to was 16k/4ish hours about 4 weeks before the race, then tapered. You might want to consider getting up to 5-6 hours on your longest swim before taper.
Another option, like you'd mentioned, is to add workouts during the week. This last race, about 8 weeks before the race, I started doing 2x/days twice a week (Tues/Thurs). My coach had me doing speed on those mornings and easy distance in the evenings. They'd total around 6-7k/day on these. And then on the weekends, we'd increase the yardage on Saturdays, but not as drastically.
Overall, you should plan for a set weekly yardage total, and break it up however it makes sense. And looking at all the yardage you'll be doing, you should probably consider giving yourself 2 rest days/week. I take Fridays off before the long day, then always Sundays. You don't want to injure yourself with overuse.
I have a Samsung Galaxy and it has an app built into it that measures heart rate. Every morning during heavy training, as soon as I woke up, I'd take my resting heart rate (RHR) before getting out of bed. My normal rate is in the low 50s and I could tell when I was getting to the point of overtraining when the RHR was getting into the upper 60s/low 70s. Those days, it was a slog and the miles were useless, so I learned that the body was telling me to take a rest day. You might consider tracking it if you can to find out your own patterns.
Good luck to you. And enjoy seeing that same bandaid at the bottom of the pool 180 times. :)
One last thing. Google Marathon Swimmers Forum. There is a lot of great information out there about feeds, training, the race itself, etc.
Thank you, for all that great info; it is helpful. I tend to be head strong, so, it is important that I remember to rest and recover! I like the idea of checking heart rate, too.
I haven't actually DONE the swim yet, but I am starting to train for longer distances. Not quite as long as 18.3, but 6.2 is fairly measureable. I think it depends on how the rest of your week is scheduled with the mileages you need to get up to for your long swim. I was reading some more experienced open water swimmers saying you can double up with good results if doing a swim in one chunk is tough to schedule, so 6 miles Saturday morning, then 6 miles Saturday evening is a possible strategy. But I don't know what the preferred strategy is. If I tripled my current plan, to get to your end goal, it would put me at a 15.3 miles long swim for my peak week (it's actually about a 9,000y swim for me). However, I plan on doing one steady easy open water swim (once the weather is tolerable) PLUS one long aerobic interval pool swim most weeks. So, in my peak week, I'm also doing an 8,000 yard pool swim, which is an amount almost equal to my long swim. I think at this point though, you might not want to think about what mileage you need to hit vs. what mileage you can hit during your peak week. Meaning, if you are at X miles right now for your long swim, don't just ramp up to what the ideal target is, ramp up only at a rate where you can handle the training without becoming over trained. Hopefully by now, you've figured out how much yardage or intensity you can add per week without breaking yourself. Stick with that.
