I've just met a top swimmer in my country who is now in his 40s, and he is in the top 5 of the national long distance swimming championships, not in the age group, but overall.
He mentioned that he trains about 80 km a week. I wonder how he can keep such amount of training in his working age, and I have found out that he is the CEO of a telecommunication company he created, i.e. he's an entrepreneur. He trains at a recreation club, i.e. a place exclusively for the upper social class.
However, even for me working in a standard 9 - 18 office job Monday to Friday, I cannot do more than 20 km a week, and recently due to the pool opening time (the pool I use opens 7:30 and closes 19:00 in winter), I can only do about 13 km a week, which is totally not enough for my target race (my target is to do 15 km race next year). If I need to do the channel afterwards I must convert my full time job to part time in the winter preceding my attempt in order to have enough training, i.e. live off my saving.
The life of an entrepreneur, with no doubt, is much busier than employed as a 9-18 office worker, how is he still possible to have 80 km training a week? This question is very offending that I dare not ask him directly.
I'm pretty sure my body would collapse under 80k/week. I can get in seriously good shape for pool racing on 80k/month. Even 60k/month can get me into respectable racing shape. Of course I've never done long distance swim racing, but I could do a 400IM that I would be pleased with on 9 hours to complete. When I first decided to do it, I looked up suggested training regimes. One suggestion was to ride 3x your race distance per week. That worked out to be closing in on 600 miles per week and I could see no way to fit that in around my work. Another suggestion was to train an average of 1/3 the race distance per day. Well 60 miles on a week day is tough to fit in with an 8+ hour work day, but 360/week, (figuring one rest day) seemed workable. I set out a schedule that was ~40/day Tu-Fr and century rides Sa&Su. That was quite workable and I was very happy with my performance in the race. So this is a long way of saying that I agree with knelson, "find the maximum your body (and schedule) will allow".
I'm pretty sure my body would collapse under 80k/week. I can get in seriously good shape for pool racing on 80k/month. Even 60k/month can get me into respectable racing shape. Of course I've never done long distance swim racing, but I could do a 400IM that I would be pleased with on 9 hours to complete. When I first decided to do it, I looked up suggested training regimes. One suggestion was to ride 3x your race distance per week. That worked out to be closing in on 600 miles per week and I could see no way to fit that in around my work. Another suggestion was to train an average of 1/3 the race distance per day. Well 60 miles on a week day is tough to fit in with an 8+ hour work day, but 360/week, (figuring one rest day) seemed workable. I set out a schedule that was ~40/day Tu-Fr and century rides Sa&Su. That was quite workable and I was very happy with my performance in the race. So this is a long way of saying that I agree with knelson, "find the maximum your body (and schedule) will allow".
