Out of curiosity, how much time does an average open water swimmer spend training each week?
And what distance events do most average open water swimmers participate?
On a weekly basis, I'm grateful when I can swim three times for an hour and fifteen minutes (4500 m). Last summer I did my first two open water events, 1.5 and 1.0 miles. I'm wondering if a longer event would be reasonable? But spending less time with my family, or at work, or asleep, are not options.
What's your approach?
I just love doing open water swims. It's a great excuse to spend a day at the beach, lake, where ever with the family and friends, have a picnic and to top it off do what I love doing - swimming!!!!!!
I spend nearly every second w/end in summer participating in one open water event or another and my training program is identical to yours - 3 times a week and my workouts vary between 3000 - 4500m.
With this I swim 2 - 4 km events. I do one 8km event at the end of June and for this I swim 4-5 kms workouts a couple of weeks
before the race.
This works for me and I think if you're training over 3k each workout you should have NO trouble doing longer events - of course what you want to achieve in each event is another matter!!
Cheers.
I do three runs and three swims per week, with the occasional bike thrown in for variety. Balance of distance depends on my current goal. For the last couple months, I was ramping up to swimming Lake Mendota (4.3 miles), so swimming predominated. I did 40,000+ yards of swimming and 100+ miles of running in August. Currently, I'm training for a marathon in early November. In October, I'll do about 25,000 yards of swimming and 130 miles of running.
Jon
I'm new to OW, so don't quote me, but I think I read somewhere that what mileage you want to swim in an event, be training that same mileage over the course of your workout week (i.e., a 5-mile event, make sure you are swimming 5-miles over the course of your week). Not sure if that is accurate though. Right now I got a one-miler coming up on Saturday so I have altered my training to focus on one mile swims for about the last two weeks. Doing one mile each day, M-TH this week and tomorrow off.
I average just shy of 20K SCY equivalents a week, usually split across 4-5 workouts in the pool. When I race OW, I like to swim 4K and 5Ks. This amount of training, for me, is sufficient to race those.
I think the answer to your larger question, though, is very individualized. I know of people doing VERY long marathon swims, who train maybe 25K-30K per week.
Based on the yardage you're doing in an hour and fifteen minutes and based on my experience, I'm thinking you could do longer swims. I think a 5K is in your range.
I'm training for 3 mile swim.
I do three swims a week. Currently I'm at about 11K yeards per week.
1) Distance swim - really slow. Alternating ***, back, free, and my pitiful kicking.
Right now, it's at about 5K yards - in 3 hours. Continents drift past me.
I'll likely get up to 6K or 7 K about a month before the swim, then I'll speed it up a little.
The kicking isn't for speeding me up or anything - it's to help prevent leg cramps. Strikes me that is the biggest preventable risk in open water.
2) Pacing swim. A warm up, a (for me) fast mile or 1.5 mile, a wind down. Takes between 50 and 75 minutes depending.
3) 100 yard intervals, followed by 50 at slow pace. about 12 right now. Less than an hour, but not much. Will probably build up to 20 X 100.
