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.
Two comments about hydrating.
Personally, I never have a water bottle at practice - even when I did the "millennial" swim which was 2,000 laps of the pool (17 hours). For whatever reason, I don't need it. Water temp was 86 degrees. Funny though - even without drinking any water for 17 hours, I had to pee every 20 minutes by the end.
Having said, there have been times when, during a 5-10 mile race that I might sip the water I am swimming in (fresh water only). But, not very much.
I personally think people over hydrate.
Sometimes TOO MUCH is the goal! I once had a running streak of 5 1/2 years WITHOUT a day off! It just got to be a challenge to keep going. I'm impressed of the 80K but that would not be my choice.
I'm with Mike above for the most part. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate before a long swim. I don't drink much for any 90 minute workouts, but more than that, I'll work through a bottle - more if the water is above 86.
Even with open water swims or "without stopping" practices, it's okay to do a quick swig here or there. The few seconds you take to slug down a swallow or two will help you more than slowly losing time as you bonk over the course of a long race. When I'm training in OW, I generally wear one of those floats that you can put your keys or water in. Or drag a bottle behind me. When doing long training at the pool, just sip when needed.
I'm not a huge fan of "straight through" more than about 2000 or so. To me, that turns into more mental training than physical. You can build endurance and speed by doing sets such as ladders or multiple 300s-500s. The Open Water and High Volume forum workouts both have good long sets to do to build up.
I go through about 3/4 of a 32 oz water bottle per workout (3000 +/-500 depending on distance ot butterfly focus). But drink between reps, rather than before.
But one of the workouts didn't allow for stopping. Had never thought about how to stay hydrated when I couldn't stop until then. Was as much curiosity as anything.
So a question for you uber long distance folks, probably mostly open water folks if any of you reading are in that category. What do you do about drinking while training? In one of my workouts "swim a 3,000 without stopping" was the main set. By 1500 yards I was parched. I just stopped at 2,000 because I desperately needed water. Was it the water temperature, or do y'all do something to stay hydrated?
I hydrate prior to starting my swims, whether open water or pool. I do sets as long as 3000 without stopping and drinking up water prior is enough. And most pools I swim in are, unfortunately, at mid-80s. I've done 4 hour workouts in a pool without having to get out to pee. For those sets, I always bring a few water bottles and drink through them. I never have to pee during the swim (thankfully), maybe perfect symbiosis? But for the next 3-4 hours after the swim, I'm peeing every 20 minutes!
In open water I drink a ton of water prior to starting, and the beauty of that is I can pee whenever I want!
A friend of mine swam the Catalina Channel a couple years ago. Next time I see him I'll ask what amount of training he was putting in before he swam it.
I asked him about this yesterday. He said the first year he was training for MIMS (swim around Manhattan) he was training over 40k per week, but he ended up getting shoulder tendonitis. The next time he cut back to about 36k and actually swam better. His advice was essentially to find the maximum your body (and schedule) will allow and make sure the long swims are easy.
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".
