I have a question for marathon swimmers...
I've been prepping for a 10k swim that I'll be doing this coming Saturday. I live in coastal southern New England. I really began training in late Feb or Early March by doing longer pool swims. Once the open waters warmed up enough for wetsuits, I moved outside in late May/early June. I completed a full 10k+ with my kayaker today and practiced feeding/drinking him. I feel ready. In the future, I'd like to maintain fitness for doing swims of this long, and longer. But my question is...how do you maintain fitness for doing swims of this distance through winter? I just don't know if I can handle six months of long pool swims.
Dan
Congrats on your swim, Dan. That was rough.
You saw how slow I am, so not sure I'm the one to give advice, but can't pass it up. ;)
Saturday was my 9th swim of 10k or longer distance, and I'm at 44% DNF rate. And I'm fine with that. I learn a lot from every DNF. But besides that, my personal and professional life is such that I get as much swimming in as I can handle. Some weeks that means 3000 yards total, and some weeks that means 15,000 with 2-3 days of weights. It all depends.
Some things, though, are constant for me: I try to swim the same number of minutes I think I'll spend in the marathon in the fourth or third week out from the event. For example, four weeks prior to my Issyk Kul swim, I swam 6 hours and 2 minutes for the week. (I had access only to a 7m long pool, so all my training FOR TWO YEARS was on straps around my ankles.) When the event came, I ended swimming it in, you guessed it, 6:02!
I also in general don't taper. I don't swim enough between events to worry about having to decrease volume. If I have had a good couple of weeks leading up to the event, like 8-10 miles for a few weeks in a row, then yes, I'll reduce that a bit prior to the race. But that's rare in my life.
Over the winter, I don't do much different. I still aim for 3-4k per swim. One thing I have done differently the past two years is weight-lifting. I found in years back that my lower back was my Achilles heel wrt long swims (~4 hours +) so I set about to strengthen my core. I started in January 2018 and swim season of 2018 I had some great swims. (I lifted 3x a week up to late June then only 2x a week. Started back to 3x a week in October after Swim the Suck.) So over the winter, I put in 3x per week swimming sessions and 3x per week lifting. My swimming sessions anyway are mostly distance tolerance (3 or 4 x 1000 after w/u), that sort of thing. I did start USRPT back in Feb I think, but haven't done that consistently enough to know if it will do anything for me.
In the end, I do these because I like the challenge. And as long as there are liberal cut-off times like Saturday's, I'll keep doing them!
See ya next time I'm down at McCorrie!
Congrats on your swim, Dan. That was rough.
You saw how slow I am, so not sure I'm the one to give advice, but can't pass it up. ;)
Saturday was my 9th swim of 10k or longer distance, and I'm at 44% DNF rate. And I'm fine with that. I learn a lot from every DNF. But besides that, my personal and professional life is such that I get as much swimming in as I can handle. Some weeks that means 3000 yards total, and some weeks that means 15,000 with 2-3 days of weights. It all depends.
Some things, though, are constant for me: I try to swim the same number of minutes I think I'll spend in the marathon in the fourth or third week out from the event. For example, four weeks prior to my Issyk Kul swim, I swam 6 hours and 2 minutes for the week. (I had access only to a 7m long pool, so all my training FOR TWO YEARS was on straps around my ankles.) When the event came, I ended swimming it in, you guessed it, 6:02!
I also in general don't taper. I don't swim enough between events to worry about having to decrease volume. If I have had a good couple of weeks leading up to the event, like 8-10 miles for a few weeks in a row, then yes, I'll reduce that a bit prior to the race. But that's rare in my life.
Over the winter, I don't do much different. I still aim for 3-4k per swim. One thing I have done differently the past two years is weight-lifting. I found in years back that my lower back was my Achilles heel wrt long swims (~4 hours +) so I set about to strengthen my core. I started in January 2018 and swim season of 2018 I had some great swims. (I lifted 3x a week up to late June then only 2x a week. Started back to 3x a week in October after Swim the Suck.) So over the winter, I put in 3x per week swimming sessions and 3x per week lifting. My swimming sessions anyway are mostly distance tolerance (3 or 4 x 1000 after w/u), that sort of thing. I did start USRPT back in Feb I think, but haven't done that consistently enough to know if it will do anything for me.
In the end, I do these because I like the challenge. And as long as there are liberal cut-off times like Saturday's, I'll keep doing them!
See ya next time I'm down at McCorrie!
