The Distance Lane

monday was distance day: 8x150 @ 1:45 1x100 @ 1:05 6x150 @ 1:45 1x100 @ 1:05 4x150 @ 1:45 1x100 @ 1:05 2x150 @ 1:45 1x100 @ 1:05 6x100 kick @ 1:45 1x50 kick @ :40 4x100 kick @ 1:45 1x50 kick @ :40 2x100 kick @ 1:45 1x50 kick @ :40 the goal was to work on switching from aerobic swimming to fast and back to aerobic (no breaks until after the first set before the kick started)

monday was distance day: ... the goal was to work on switching from aerobic swimming to fast and back to aerobic (no breaks until after the first set before the kick started) This is a more formal, pool-oriented way to get at an approach frequently recommended for OW: pick up the pace (sprint*) for 1/4 to 1/3 of the total time. Different applications of the principle are possible: for a shortish, 1- or 2-mile swim, 9 sprint strokes, 30 regular, say; but for a Channel crossing it might be sprint 15 minutes out of the hour. It helps to be able to turn on and off the sprint pace for long pool swims as well. I did two consecutive 1000 yds and used the sprint technique mindfully on the second (totally forgot about it on the first!), dropping my time by 5%, even though I was tired. *Note: "Sprint" in such cases probably means something different to distance people. For example, we still breathe. :)

yesterday... 1st OW swim of 2010 in NY for me. hudson river north of beacon 57 degrees.... 30 mins north; 30 minutes south .... with rondi and willie. An hour! how nice! Lake Michigan is hovering around 51; no one-hour swims yet. Chaos, do you sprint episodically in OW swims, as described in my above post? Thanks.

I'm aiming for a good 1500 LCM in July. I find that 50s and 100s don't provide the mental discipline I need. I like to keep my repeats in the 200-500 range. Today's key set: 8 x 300 on an interval that gave me about 10 seconds rest. There was a good discussion in past year on how to train for 500s. As I recall, the basic unit was around 125 yd, with short rest. I'll try to find it in next day or so and post a link (deadlines now). Do you have a goal pace for the 8 x 300, or a specific way of splitting them?

yesterday... 1st OW swim of 2010 in NY for me. hudson river north of beacon 57 degrees.... 30 mins north; 30 minutes south .... with rondi and willie.

An hour! how nice! Lake Michigan is hovering around 51; no one-hour swims yet. Chaos, do you sprint episodically in OW swims, as described in my above post? Thanks. i often apply fartlek techniques during long swims... like: 20 strokes cruise, 10 strokes fast, 20 strokes cruise, 20 strokes fast, 20 strokes cruise, 30 strokes fast.... etc to 100 strokes fast and then back down. to differentiate between speeds (and help me keep count) i'll change my breathing pattern between cruise and fast speeds. yesterday, we started with the current (the hudson flows both ways) and finished against, so in effect, the first 30 minutes was cruise, and the way back was fast (but not faster!)

I'm aiming for a good 1500 LCM in July. I find that 50s and 100s don't provide the mental discipline I need. I like to keep my repeats in the 200-500 range. Today's key set: 8 x 300 on an interval that gave me about 10 seconds rest.

I just did my first 1650 yesterday! Dropped my time from a 24:30 last week to a 22:09.31. Here are my 33 50s: 35.72 37.96 42.83 41.22 41.08 40.40 40.76 40.20 41.02 40.17 40.44 40.18 40.21 40.53 39.95 40.03 41.26 40.21 40.17 40.71 40.09 40.84 40.61 41.13 40.74 40.61 41.10 40.88 40.63 40.34 40.58 40.24 36.47

Any good set recommendations for training for the 1500/1650? I have a couple races coming up and would like to get my time down to a sub 19min This thread had some good discussions about training for the 1650: forums.usms.org/showthread.php

Interesting discussion on fartlek or episodic sprinting during open-water training. It took me a long time (a few years) of lake swimming to realize that I shouldn't be just swimming at cruise pace the whole time. So I started modeling my lake swims after distance running workouts -- some easy, some tempo, some intervals. I know nothing about recommended open-water training approaches, so I'd love to hear what other people do. My intervals are usually something like N strokes fast, then N or 2N strokes slow. N is 10 to 100.