When you trian for a logn distance swim, how far do you go in your longest training swims? How do you find the balance between risk of injury and not going far enouhg?
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Former Member
Another option for training for a marathon attempt is to swim long sessions back to back. In 2004 I was training to swim the channel and had a predicted crossing time of 14 hrs. The longest ever training swim I did was 8 hrs (crossing was 12.5hrs) about a month before the attempt. The following day I swam 7 hrs and have never experieced so much pain. In hindsight this training swim was harder than the crossing itself and though I never swam the total distace before the big swim was fantastic mental preparation. It also helped me have the confidence to "properly taper" which totally paid off as this 3-4wk period enabled almost miraculous repair of a very bad shoulder problem.
As for splitting pool and ocean. Depends totally on the event. I trained succesfully for a 10km swim exclusively in the pool one season but the sea temp was quite warm and there wasn't much tidal effect. As a general rule I would say if the water is colder (than pool temp) and the course likely to be strongly effected by tide or weather performance will be improved by greater ocean time (close to 100% training) as temperature adjustment and ability to swim in variable conditions will be just as dominant skills as fitness. And in reality mental preparation will play a much bigger part if conditions are bad.
You will often get a swollen/numb tongue and have difficulty swallowing on a long ocean swim. Which are things you are unlikely to experience in the pool (unless it is salt) it really depends how many unknows you want to remove before the big event. If it is hard to get regular ocean time I would plan on at least one quite long swim (60 - 80% distance/time depending on the swim length) with similar support to what you will have on the day. As well as the training benefit it will help you sort out feeding and communication issues before the event which will improve you performance on the day.
As per distance and risk of injury, from experience this is more to do with increasing training load to quickly. I think the general rule is not too increase training more that 10% each year and throughout the season increases of more than 10% per week are not recommended - don't quote me though. If you do increase by more than that (and even if you don't) I'd suggest strong adherance to warm up and cool down (at least 20% of training time depending on the session) and large amounts of stretching before training. If training every day use a protein recovery drink/food afterwards (could be as simple as a glass of milk) to help muscles repair before the next session and very important - find a good sports therapist and get into a regular massage routine.
Another option for training for a marathon attempt is to swim long sessions back to back. In 2004 I was training to swim the channel and had a predicted crossing time of 14 hrs. The longest ever training swim I did was 8 hrs (crossing was 12.5hrs) about a month before the attempt. The following day I swam 7 hrs and have never experieced so much pain. In hindsight this training swim was harder than the crossing itself and though I never swam the total distace before the big swim was fantastic mental preparation. It also helped me have the confidence to "properly taper" which totally paid off as this 3-4wk period enabled almost miraculous repair of a very bad shoulder problem.
As for splitting pool and ocean. Depends totally on the event. I trained succesfully for a 10km swim exclusively in the pool one season but the sea temp was quite warm and there wasn't much tidal effect. As a general rule I would say if the water is colder (than pool temp) and the course likely to be strongly effected by tide or weather performance will be improved by greater ocean time (close to 100% training) as temperature adjustment and ability to swim in variable conditions will be just as dominant skills as fitness. And in reality mental preparation will play a much bigger part if conditions are bad.
You will often get a swollen/numb tongue and have difficulty swallowing on a long ocean swim. Which are things you are unlikely to experience in the pool (unless it is salt) it really depends how many unknows you want to remove before the big event. If it is hard to get regular ocean time I would plan on at least one quite long swim (60 - 80% distance/time depending on the swim length) with similar support to what you will have on the day. As well as the training benefit it will help you sort out feeding and communication issues before the event which will improve you performance on the day.
As per distance and risk of injury, from experience this is more to do with increasing training load to quickly. I think the general rule is not too increase training more that 10% each year and throughout the season increases of more than 10% per week are not recommended - don't quote me though. If you do increase by more than that (and even if you don't) I'd suggest strong adherance to warm up and cool down (at least 20% of training time depending on the session) and large amounts of stretching before training. If training every day use a protein recovery drink/food afterwards (could be as simple as a glass of milk) to help muscles repair before the next session and very important - find a good sports therapist and get into a regular massage routine.
