RE: PT-Triathletes & Seasonal Swimmers: How to plan the “more important” Swim Season

swimshark — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:52:52 GMT

I did my first sprint tri this summer and darn it, I am hooked. Thanks! I don't have any advice but I had to tell you that I did my first tri this weekend (a sprint) too and I liked it. I am far from a runner but do spinning once a week. I will be out for wrist surgery so my next tri will be in March. I'll be working on the run over the "winter". Good luck. Alison

RE: PT-Triathletes & Seasonal Swimmers: How to plan the “more important” Swim Season

m2tall2 — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:47:24 GMT

Yeah, when I taper, its more in terms off adding more sprint and slightly longer rest invervals than actual less time in the water. I switch from trying to get a mix of all levels to either easy and/or technique or race pace. The yardage difference is minimal.

RE: PT-Triathletes & Seasonal Swimmers: How to plan the “more important” Swim Season

Kevin in MD — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:16:41 GMT

With only 4 hours per week, don't sweat the training mix too much just keep moving. For those triathletes who rotate sports, your focus sport would be 4 or 5 workouts per week, the other two maintenance sports you do twice per week. In your own case you you have the added restriction of 4 days per week and if I read correctly, New England weather to deal with. It depends on when your A race meets are. Here in Maryland SCY meets start in october. But for the moment I'll assume that February is your big meet. With that in mind, I think in the fall a balanced schedule would be good, riding outdoors until the weather won't allow it. You can also get in a fall half marathon for the run exposure. Come December you'd probably be heading inside fore a swim focus block. By this tie it is getting pretty cold to ride outside although running is still OK. So from December to March or so swimming 4 times per week with running on a maintenance schedule of 1 or 2 times per week. With limited time availability, assuming you are healthy, you'd want to emphasize running over biking due to the bigger aerobic benefit per minute of running, that's why 2 runs and no biking. The weather also plays a part in it. Round about March you can start running a bit more and cut back on the swimming, then when the warm weather comes emphasize biking for a while before you do a balanced schedule through the summer. As for tapers, with only 4 hours of training per week I don't see any tapers really being necessary. A little fine tuning of your training mix and a couple of days easy and you should swim well. Don't sweat changing the swim events you train for. A good 200 swimmer will spank just about every triathlete in the water anyway.