I got 10,000 last summer with my old club team, on their weekly Wednesday "10 or 10." My coach has been doing it since I was in high school (that's when he started this crazy idea). Practice starts at 6:30 am. You go until you reach 10,000 meters (its not straight swimming, it is an organized practice) or 10:00 am, whichever comes first. SPOILER ALERT: usually we would hit 10,000 meters somewhere between 9:45 and 10:00, so there was no advantage to "slow rolling" the practice.
He HAS tweaked the format as he has gotten older. For instance, we used to just muscle through the whole practice and there was a lot of garbage yardage thrown in to reach 10,000 when I was a high schooler (like 8x400 pull "lungbusters" or some other such hypoxic set). When I was back last summer, both Wednesdays I was there for had sets that were never much larger than 2500 meters at a time. Also somewhere around the 5000-6000 mark, there was a ten minute "feed session" for us to refuel. I liked that. Helped break up the practice (it was also when the usual mass exodus occurred: swimmers insisting they had to "leave early for work" !!)
Looking back on my comeback, it looks like my longest day was ~12,400, back in mid June, when I did a 6200M morning practice followed by a 6200Y afternoon practice.
I got 10,000 last summer with my old club team, on their weekly Wednesday "10 or 10." My coach has been doing it since I was in high school (that's when he started this crazy idea). Practice starts at 6:30 am. You go until you reach 10,000 meters (its not straight swimming, it is an organized practice) or 10:00 am, whichever comes first. SPOILER ALERT: usually we would hit 10,000 meters somewhere between 9:45 and 10:00, so there was no advantage to "slow rolling" the practice.
He HAS tweaked the format as he has gotten older. For instance, we used to just muscle through the whole practice and there was a lot of garbage yardage thrown in to reach 10,000 when I was a high schooler (like 8x400 pull "lungbusters" or some other such hypoxic set). When I was back last summer, both Wednesdays I was there for had sets that were never much larger than 2500 meters at a time. Also somewhere around the 5000-6000 mark, there was a ten minute "feed session" for us to refuel. I liked that. Helped break up the practice (it was also when the usual mass exodus occurred: swimmers insisting they had to "leave early for work" !!)
Looking back on my comeback, it looks like my longest day was ~12,400, back in mid June, when I did a 6200M morning practice followed by a 6200Y afternoon practice.
