Just a thought/request:
At some point in the future, it would be nice to have workouts posted by someone who specializes in LONG distance coaching with an eye on open water distances (1 mile "death sprints" to ??? miles). The workouts provided are generally excellent, but since open water distances basically start where pool distances leave off, it would be great to have something a bit more specific. This is especially true since there is a relatively small body of printed work on longer distance/open water training and coaches for LONG distances seem few and far between.
Would anyone else be interested and would this be possible?
-LBJ
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Interval training was formally introduced in the 1930's in Germany by two scientist named Gerschler and Reindell, if memory serves me correctly - to train an 800 meter runner named Rudolph Harbig, but was actually focused more on heart rate response and recovery than the actual distances and rest time. It evolved more towards distance/time as it was a pain to constantly take your heart rate. With the advent of inexpensive, wearable heart rate monitors, there is more heart rate work being done (in track) these days than previously. Due to the water element involved, heart rate monitoring is more problematic and hence the standard distance/time interval that is still practiced in swimming. Track and Field did use extensive (often exclusive) intervals to train distance runners in the 1950's through the early 1970's, most notably successful were athletes like Emil Zatopec, who did do things like 50 X 400 meters (or more). The longest pool race (1500/1650) is roughly equivalent in time to a 5000m run, so the use of extensive intervals is not surprising as it is often done that way in track today.
That was a long-winded way of getting to this point: My original question was about LONG distance swimming (let's say 5k up to English Channel type efforts) and my wondering how a coach would train someone for that. There is little published info on this topic. In that regard, I would expect some longer pace swims ("LSD" would be a poor term for this, I think) would be done analogous to what marathon runners (~10k swim race in time) do. But again, it's just a guess and I still have nothing "definitive."
-LBJ
Interval training was formally introduced in the 1930's in Germany by two scientist named Gerschler and Reindell, if memory serves me correctly - to train an 800 meter runner named Rudolph Harbig, but was actually focused more on heart rate response and recovery than the actual distances and rest time. It evolved more towards distance/time as it was a pain to constantly take your heart rate. With the advent of inexpensive, wearable heart rate monitors, there is more heart rate work being done (in track) these days than previously. Due to the water element involved, heart rate monitoring is more problematic and hence the standard distance/time interval that is still practiced in swimming. Track and Field did use extensive (often exclusive) intervals to train distance runners in the 1950's through the early 1970's, most notably successful were athletes like Emil Zatopec, who did do things like 50 X 400 meters (or more). The longest pool race (1500/1650) is roughly equivalent in time to a 5000m run, so the use of extensive intervals is not surprising as it is often done that way in track today.
That was a long-winded way of getting to this point: My original question was about LONG distance swimming (let's say 5k up to English Channel type efforts) and my wondering how a coach would train someone for that. There is little published info on this topic. In that regard, I would expect some longer pace swims ("LSD" would be a poor term for this, I think) would be done analogous to what marathon runners (~10k swim race in time) do. But again, it's just a guess and I still have nothing "definitive."
-LBJ
