I was wondering how people calculated open water distances? I started to swim in Long Beach, CA and was wondering if there was something that can help me figure out distances, for example, if there was a standard distance between life guard stations or beach bathrooms (I tried talking to the lifeguards but no one knew :confused: )
Don’t get me started on triathletes propensity to sprint the first 200 meters of the swim. How many marathon runners sprint the first mile, before settling into their pace?
But back to your questions; The first thing I recommend is to find your stroke rate, this way you won’t need to be checking the clock as much in training. After a 5 minute warm-up swim, time yourself for a 100 stroke swim (right arm + left arm = 2 strokes) at a moderate pace. The time for this should be somewhere between 1 minute (fast turnover) and 2 minutes (slow turnover).
For the sake of this post let’s assume your stroke rate is 60 strokes per minute (1:40 on your test swim) and your goal time for the swim is 20 minutes.
One possible training swim could be:
• 5 minute warm-up swim
• 100 strokes moderate pace (60%), 100 at 70%, 100 at 80%, 100 at 95%, 100 at 80% and 100 strokes easy (a 10 minute swim)
• 200 strokes at 70%, 200 at 80% and 200 at 90% (another 10 minute swim)
• easy 2 – minute swim
• 300 strokes all out (5 minute swim)
• 10-20 minute body surfing warm-down, practicing riding the waves on the way in (the greatest way to finish an ocean swim is catching a wave) and not getting thrashed by the waves on your way out
Don’t get me started on triathletes propensity to sprint the first 200 meters of the swim. How many marathon runners sprint the first mile, before settling into their pace?
But back to your questions; The first thing I recommend is to find your stroke rate, this way you won’t need to be checking the clock as much in training. After a 5 minute warm-up swim, time yourself for a 100 stroke swim (right arm + left arm = 2 strokes) at a moderate pace. The time for this should be somewhere between 1 minute (fast turnover) and 2 minutes (slow turnover).
For the sake of this post let’s assume your stroke rate is 60 strokes per minute (1:40 on your test swim) and your goal time for the swim is 20 minutes.
One possible training swim could be:
• 5 minute warm-up swim
• 100 strokes moderate pace (60%), 100 at 70%, 100 at 80%, 100 at 95%, 100 at 80% and 100 strokes easy (a 10 minute swim)
• 200 strokes at 70%, 200 at 80% and 200 at 90% (another 10 minute swim)
• easy 2 – minute swim
• 300 strokes all out (5 minute swim)
• 10-20 minute body surfing warm-down, practicing riding the waves on the way in (the greatest way to finish an ocean swim is catching a wave) and not getting thrashed by the waves on your way out
