training for marathon open water swim

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.

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.