best training for o.w.

Is it a good idea to also do one long continuous swim a week, in addition to the intervals?

I don't know about "continuous," but I think if you are aiming at an event that will keep you swimming for 30 minutes or more solid you need at least once per week to swim for that long or longer without really letting up. A short-rest interval set is probably a better way to accomplish that result in the pool than a continuous swim; it gets the intensity up, and the clock keeps you honest on effort and pace. I have been pretty successful in distances up to 5K and I never do a straight 5K in workout. I think you need to train four skills to succeed at OW swimming: 1. Your heart needs to be able to maintain an elevated rate for as long as your swim lasts. You don't have to train this skill in the water, although you can if your skeleton can take the repetitive strain. I like cross-training for the heart because it alleviates strain on the swimming muscles and joints. I used to run; now I go to spin class. 2. Your swimming muscles need to be able to work for as long as your swim lasts. You do have to train this skill in the water, but you don't have to train it through continuous swimming. You just need to make sure that your workouts are long enough, with enough sustained effort overall, to build enough muscular endurance to last the swim. Assuming your goal swim is going to take you 1.5 hours or less, you should probably aim to have at least one workout per week that is longer than your actual goal swim. 3. You need to be able to swim fast in bursts. At the start, you need to stay with the pack that you want to finish with. You might need to pass someone, or get away from some irritating toe-tapper. You have to train this skill in the water, too, through fast swims. Maybe you don't need as many 50s on 3:00 as a sprinter, but you could use a few. This skill is my weakest, but I am working on it by training for (and going to) pool meets. 4. You need to be able to navigate. You pretty much have to train this skill in OW. The better you get at sneaking a look without breaking your alignment or cadence, the faster you will be. If your swim lasts more than about 1.5h, you will probably need to drink and eat during the swim and you need to train those skills too. Likewise, the event will probably require that you have an escort craft, and you will want to practice with that person. I have never done such a swim, though, so I don't have any insight about practicing for one.

When time is limited I found race pace interval training to be the best. 50s, 100s, 200s and 400s. Don't forget to do a warmup and cooldown swim.

I have been swimming for two years....no previous training in swimming, I am 48...I know this is stupid, and has probably been answered many times....but here goes...what do you mean by "race pace"?. for my one hour swim I held 1:00 for 50 yards....My best 100 time is 1:30....(I know old and slow) I swim on my own and have been using some of the workouts posted on this site,and I enjoy them, the one I use a lot has a lot of descend 100's and 200's. ..(during the warmer months I supplement the pool workouts with a mile lake swim a couple times a week).....should I be changing the workout, as I plan on some distance open water swims this year? more harder intervals instead of the descends? (did a 1 mile and a 2.5 mile last year, they were fun) Thanks in advance

Rather then me here is what someone else thinks about race pace. www.brianmac.co.uk/.../swimspeed.htm

Hey Rhoda, I just wanted to say not to underestimate how much faster you can go when following someone, part of it is the draft but a big part is that you can keep your head down and swim without having to sight. I did the SwimTrek trip in the Greek Cyclades (highly recommended!) and I could keep up with our guide when drafting, leaving all the sighting up to her, I could never have kept that pace swimming on my own. At a local open water race I have a friend of roughly equal speed but who is much better at sighting than I am, in the last race I drafted the first half of the race, keeping up easily, then we got separated a bit and I wasn't able to get back to him, and he left me in the dust from that point onward. I guess the other approach is to practice sighting a lot, perfecting your ability to get a look with minimal disturbance to your stroke. I don't do enough of that.

Thank you, that's a lot of good advice. Last year I built up a lot of base meterage while training for a Swimtrek tour in Croatia, averaged about 3000m a day for 5 straight days in Croatia, and continued to do a Sunday long swim every week after getting back. The Croatia experience was a big confidence booster for skills like sighting and catching bottles hurled out of boats. Recently I switched to repeats of 100m at slightly faster than goal pace (my goal is to to under an hour for a local 2500m race.) I started with eight and have added one each week - this week will do 11 of them, hoping to build up to at least 22. So, if I'm reading you right, I should be eventually aiming to shorten my rest between them. Perhaps to 10 or 15 seconds? I am doing short sprint efforts, but as I'm as slow as molasses in January, it's unlikely there will be anyone there my pace to catch up with. I'm just aiming for the time for my own satisfaction.