How often do you swim long distance non-stop, say 1500m or more? How often is good? I try to plan for myself :)
(Also, when doing that, do you swim only freestyle or sometimes change to different strokes?)
OK, so I did the 5K postal and I was surprised at how much more it hurt than the one-hour swim, and how much I slowed down after 3000 meters.
In particular, the last 1000 meters took me almost 20 minutes which, um, was not my goal! My arms were in much tightness/achy pain, so I did a fair amount of fingertip drag during those last 100s to see if I could loosen them up.
I did make some strategic errors by deciding on doing intervals rather than swimming straight through. Thus at the beginning I was resting quite a bit, and at the end I was dying trying to make my intervals, though the interval approach made the 5K go by like a breeze.
Still, I swam nearly 4000 yards in the one-hour swim; and it took me 1.5 hours to do 5K. Ouch!
I still want to do the 10K, again, to see how it feels, but with a little more training before I do it, and also I will eat somewhere in the middle of it, bagels or something, for fuel.
And Knelson (I think) is right: I am doing these long swims because I am curious about the experience of them, plus I want to see if I can do all the postal swims this year, just as a personal challenge.
So the 5K surpised me with its painfulness, especially the last 1000 meters.
It wasn't awful to do. I'm glad I did it, and my coach (counting for me) said I inspired him to start swimming more and maybe do it with me next year.
