I am a runner and using swimming (right now) mostly for crosstraining, please don't hurt me. :D I know what these different zones are for running, but I don't know how they would correspond to actually swimming (putting them in practice). For runners, at least in the basic plan I'm following (Lydiard), you are not supposed to do any anaerobic training in your base phase (which I'm in), or very very little. I want to make sure that I am not going into anything more intense than LT, or at least be knowledgeable of what it takes to go into each zone.
I must add - I love swimming, I am thinking of maybe doing a triathlon one day or perhaps joining a club.
Thanks for the help!
-x
Parents
Former Member
As a longtime runner/coach whose arthritic knees have driven me to try swimming, I wonder how much difference between running culture and swimming culture can be derived from the potential for mind-twisting boredom in the pool.
Nowadays, almost no runner training for a distance longer than 100m does all of their training on the track,...get over 800m and the bulk of it is off the track.
IF you go back to the bad all old days of extreme interval training in running in the 50's or 60's, you see a change. IF you look a Mihaily Igloi, a noted running coach of his era, he insisted his runner's do ALL of their training on the track, and his workouts were just as insanely convuluted as the workouts I see here.
I clain absolutely no expertise in swim training, (other than what carries over from running or endurance sport in general) but since I am stuck coaching myself, I have stuck to something a runner would recognize: Relaxed ocean swims up to 2hrs...moderate to intense intervals in the pool, and so on, and so forth.
The BIG difference, which I have come to respect, is stroke maintence. As a runner, recovery meant a slow jog on a trail. As a swimmer, I have fallen into a recovery habit, of repeat 50's with adeqaute rest, and extreme attention paid to technique. I feel that is not too far off of what I have read upthread.
The similarities/differences between running and swimming have been fascinating to me right from the start. I would bet that both sports occasionally suffer from an overload of "received wisdom."
As a longtime runner/coach whose arthritic knees have driven me to try swimming, I wonder how much difference between running culture and swimming culture can be derived from the potential for mind-twisting boredom in the pool.
Nowadays, almost no runner training for a distance longer than 100m does all of their training on the track,...get over 800m and the bulk of it is off the track.
IF you go back to the bad all old days of extreme interval training in running in the 50's or 60's, you see a change. IF you look a Mihaily Igloi, a noted running coach of his era, he insisted his runner's do ALL of their training on the track, and his workouts were just as insanely convuluted as the workouts I see here.
I clain absolutely no expertise in swim training, (other than what carries over from running or endurance sport in general) but since I am stuck coaching myself, I have stuck to something a runner would recognize: Relaxed ocean swims up to 2hrs...moderate to intense intervals in the pool, and so on, and so forth.
The BIG difference, which I have come to respect, is stroke maintence. As a runner, recovery meant a slow jog on a trail. As a swimmer, I have fallen into a recovery habit, of repeat 50's with adeqaute rest, and extreme attention paid to technique. I feel that is not too far off of what I have read upthread.
The similarities/differences between running and swimming have been fascinating to me right from the start. I would bet that both sports occasionally suffer from an overload of "received wisdom."
