After the Swedish Masters Open, I shifted from training for pool events to longer open water races.
On July 11th I will swim the Swedish Open Water 5km and the following Sunday swim a 3km race along with 4500 others. I feel that my tempo and distance training has gone well. last year I swam the 3km race in 45:15. based on my pool work outs and the few lake swims I have done I think I have a chance to get down to 40:00 (goal is under 42:00 to be seeded in next yrs race). For the Friday night 5km race, I am guessing there will only be 15-25 swimmers. I am hoping not to get last, but timewise hoping to go under 1:10 (1:15 is the slowest I want to go).
anyways, this weekend I am going to race with the kids. 50-100-200 ***, and potentially the 4x100 medley relay and 4x200 B-team relay.
So last week and this week I have changed my workouts to concentrate on breaststroke technic and speed work. I do technic drills, 25 sprints, broken 100's, 200 neg and I do my work outs about 80% breaststroke.
since I will only have 3-5 races over a three day meet, I am thinking of taking advantage of the pool time and swimming 1-2 hours during the session I have no races.
Here's the question, will this two week pause from my distance training have a noticable effect? Should I be able to just go back to my distant passes in the lake on Monday?
I was hoping to get right back in and do 5km on monday, 4km on tuesday and wednesday.....thursday off day, then friday (july 4th), saturday and sunday get in a 90-120 minute swim, since my goal is to get the race done under 75min, I want to know what it feels like to swim 75 and then push myself 15-45 minutes past that point. with out pushing myself, I have done a 4km on 58:20 and a 3km approx 43:00 (but on the 3km I had a hard time concentrating in swimming and swam about 25-35m off course, side to side, almost never in a straight line.)
My last pace workout I did 10x100 start 1:40 followed by a 50 ez and then 5x200 start 3:00. was able to hold for the most part 1:12 (:35/:37) and 2:30 (1:14/1:16) granted it was a lot of rest.
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Former Member
One of the things I have my OW folks do in prep for big OW races is having them put on a stretch cordz long belt and tie one end to the blocks. Then I have them do "neverending" 25's or 50's depending on which pool we are in. That's typically anywhere from a 28 to a 36 minute swim.
Then during those timed swims they will do one of the following:
1) Swim a specific stroke count (i.e. 1800 strokes)
2) Swim a specific stroke count with a pattern - one of the popular patterns is called a burst ladder - you do 20 strokes cruise/5 strokes burst fast (the prelude to an OW pass), then you do 20 strokes cruise/10 strokes burst...all the way up to 20 strokes cruise/50 strokes burst. Do the 50 strokes burst twice and then come back down the ladder. Depending on your stroke count per length, your distance for a ladder can be anywhere between 800 and 1400 meters/yards.
3) Swim a general pattern with no overall stroke count - 10 strokes cruise/10 strokes fists...etc
This is the best pool emulation of OW I can think of and my OW swimmers (I have a lot of tri's) love it. Sometimes we will throw snorkels on and they will do very long tether swims. When I need to correct something I will just give the tether a little pull and correct whatever needs fixing.
This way they have no transition problems and they aren't too concerned about OW time. Our pools and ponds aren't the greatest around here and if the weather is right, even our larger ponds can be overcrowded.
One of the things I have my OW folks do in prep for big OW races is having them put on a stretch cordz long belt and tie one end to the blocks. Then I have them do "neverending" 25's or 50's depending on which pool we are in. That's typically anywhere from a 28 to a 36 minute swim.
Then during those timed swims they will do one of the following:
1) Swim a specific stroke count (i.e. 1800 strokes)
2) Swim a specific stroke count with a pattern - one of the popular patterns is called a burst ladder - you do 20 strokes cruise/5 strokes burst fast (the prelude to an OW pass), then you do 20 strokes cruise/10 strokes burst...all the way up to 20 strokes cruise/50 strokes burst. Do the 50 strokes burst twice and then come back down the ladder. Depending on your stroke count per length, your distance for a ladder can be anywhere between 800 and 1400 meters/yards.
3) Swim a general pattern with no overall stroke count - 10 strokes cruise/10 strokes fists...etc
This is the best pool emulation of OW I can think of and my OW swimmers (I have a lot of tri's) love it. Sometimes we will throw snorkels on and they will do very long tether swims. When I need to correct something I will just give the tether a little pull and correct whatever needs fixing.
This way they have no transition problems and they aren't too concerned about OW time. Our pools and ponds aren't the greatest around here and if the weather is right, even our larger ponds can be overcrowded.
