There is no answer for this. Some people can run sub 90minute half marathons with <20MPW for a few months, while some people will never do it despite years of 50+MPW.

If you give specifics about your history and current training volume, someone could help with a ramp up training plan that will push you to your potential.

Thanks,
I hope I did not mislead you. I don't really care about my running in this thread.

The intention is to highlight to the non-swimmers how much time they have to put in, by comparing it to how much time a non-runner would have to put in.

I think a non-runner might have to work up to 7-8 hours a week, and do that for months, and that swimmers should expect at least that, if not more, in order to become good swimmers. But I need the community help to offer more educated opinions.

In most sports, folks that are dedicated to it full time spend around 10-20 hours a week doing the actual activity in training, which is basically as much as the body can stand for particular sports (e.g. you can not spend as many hours running per week as you can cycling or swimming without risking injury). And it take several years of that level of effort to peak out.

But, to a very large degree, prolonged well structured training just makes you, relatively speaking, a bit faster than you are at the start. Talent is a huge factor in athletic performance Folks that are talented enough to rise to the top of their sports are generally pretty good by amateur hobbyist standards right out of the box.

For example, from my experience observing little swimmers over the years (coaching and watching my kids friend develop) the kids who went on to be great swimmers in their late tens and 20's were swimming at a 1:10-1:15 per 100 yard pace the first time they had a clock put on them as 7 or 8 year olds. Runners and cyclists probably are not relatively that fast at 7 or 8 since they don't usually start formal programs that young but I'm quite certain you'd see similarly that the good ones start out fast and get faster. It is sad, but true, that in most sports, for many late starting adults with average talent, all the work they are doing is just getting them to where the super talented folks start.

can't speak about runners.

but i can tell you as i am primarily focused on cycling, most cat 3-4 guys ride 12-15 hrs will peaks of 20 hrs. just riding.

Running is far more taxing on your body than biking or swimming, so it's hard to compare. Even the elite guys that are winning marathons are 'only' running 12-15 hours a week. You have to take a long time to build up to running in the 8-10 hours a week type of volume, otherwise you'll probably end up with an injury.

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To be all you an be at swimming/cycling, you will hit around 30 hours per week at time.

For running, ~100+ miles per week at times.

Work backwards from there. It is non linear though. Half the ideal volume gets you ~90 to 95% of your potential fitness.

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The answer is more than you're currently running.

First off, most people need to run every day, or at least six days a week. Frequency is key - that may be 6-14 runs per week depending on an infinite number of variables. For some people that may be 6-7 x 20 min runs... for others it may be 12 x 1 hour run + 1 x 2 hour run per week if they're running serious mileage.

Unlike swimming or cycling you can't just jump into doing 10+ hours a week. If you have no foundation, it's probably going to start off maybe running 2 hours a week over 7 days. As with anything though, you always have to be adapting/modifying the stimulus in order to improve. For someone who's been running 100mpw, 50mpw is not going to maintain their fitness. For someone who's averaged 25 mpg for awhile, 50 could have massive benefits if their body can handle it.

The answer is frequency first, then add volume/intensity to that frequency.

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10,000 hours (not per week obviously)

http://www.sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm

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Quote:

My purpose in asking this, is that I think that poor swimmers who wish to get fast, don't really accept the pool time price that simply must be paid at some point in your life.

There is a huge disconnect in most of the swimming threads between what folks do and what folks who are actually serious about getting faster at swimming do. Most folks have a general idea about what a "real" runner or cyclist does and adjust down to fit their time, commitment, and real life. For swimming though, most triathletes live in fantasy land and do not start from the level of a real swimmer and work backwards. Rather, triathletes have collectively come up with their own fantasy swim world completely divorced from the reality of what it takes to get good a swimming.


Its probably a huge waste of time for almost any triathlete to "swim like a swimmer" but the fact is that 2000 yds of swimming is a warm up for a real swimmer, not a work out and even your average 10 year old on as swim team is swimming more than 75% of all triathletes. That is much more of the explanation for poor swim performance than all the endless talk about technique issues and at least some acknowledgement of that would help a lot of folks get on the road to a much more effective training regime in the pool.

Its probably a huge waste of time for almost any triathlete to "swim like a swimmer" but the fact is that 2000 yds of swimming is a warm up for a real swimmer, not a work out and even your average 10 year old on as swim team is swimming more than 75% of all triathletes. That is much more of the explanation for poor swim performance than all the endless talk about technique issues and at least some acknowledgement of that would help a lot of folks get on the road to a much more effective training regime in the pool.


There is a lot of truth in that statement. One thing that a lot of people forget is that fixing technique is actually rewiring your brain, along with training muscles, developing flexibility and the aerobic system. It takes a lot of repetitions for the old, ineffective connections to get replaced with the new and improved ones.

ETA - I'm pretty sure that jonnyo, myself and pretty much every other experienced swimmer has said that it is hard work that gets you there, not magical overnight success.

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If you're under 60 years old and a normal BMI, one to two years of 2000 miles/year will put 95% of runners under a 1:30 half marathon. Which is the top 50-150 finishers in a race of 1,000-5,000, or top 5%. Beyond that is some mix of more miles, productive speed work, and the right parents.

Getting to that 40 mpw average, of course, can take a few years in itself. Ramp up mileage too quickly, with crappy form, and you may end up injured with a setback that costs you a year or more.

This article appears to be discussing the values of having mostly low and some high intensity within an overall plan. That seems to be outside the scope of this discussion. Care to point out the relevance?

Although that's true but that could also mean you'll achieve a really high level despite being not talented. Look at kyle buckingham the winner of last year's kona AG. I listend to some of his interview and he pretty much is raw talent. He was like about as fast as ben hoffman, well technically 1 min slower.

If you scroll down further it talks about annual hours for elite athletes by sport.

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To what degree do we need to consider weekly training hours in relation to the amount of time one will spend doing each discipline in a tri? In an IM for example, a 3:30 marathoner might spend 2x that amount of time running per week. A 5:30 IM cyclist might spend 2x that amount of time cycling per week. A 1:00-hr IM swimmer, however, might spend 5x that amount of time swimming per week. Shouldn't we consider the return of investment of our time?

Dee...that's a pretty big training week for an age grouper. 23 hours?

Interesting, although too much. We want to quantify the workload to go from crappy to good, not crappy to elite.

For clarity of the discussion, I am asking not to consider other sports at all.

Quote:

ETA - I'm pretty sure that jonnyo, myself and pretty much every other experienced swimmer has said that it is hard work that gets you there, not magical overnight success.

I've been here off and on for years and that is almost universal theme in all ST swim threats. Someone struggling asks some version of how to improve technique and/or swim faster. The experienced swimmers who know what they are talking about eventually chime in and say some version of "work harder." And the string continues with posts saying essentially, "no, but really, what drills can I do to get faster?"

See my post above then. The answer is more than you've been running.

A decent metric for developing high school into collegiate into post-collegiate distance runners is the average 10 miles per week more than you did before (barring major injury/setback). If someone doesn't start running until 11th grade, they're not starting at 50... they're starting at 30.

So a career might look like (less for 800/1500 types).

9th - 30
10th - 40
11th - 50
12th - 60
Frosh - 70
Soph - 80
Jr - 90
Sr - 100
Post - 100+

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I agree, but that's my point -- discipline-centric guys tend to promote 'adequate' time on 'their' discipline, which if followed by age - groupers would add up to 20+ hours per week. Swim guys seem to be the most aggressive about this. Sure, a MOP swimmer 'should' swim 5+ hours per week. He 'should' bike and run a bunch too. Because most of us are time and energy limited, we swim less than we should and consequently swim 5-15 min slower than we would if we took the time to learn how to properly swim.

Cheesy, we can't give your question serious consideration without taking into account the other disciplines, at least not if you want to know what triathletes think. Triathletes must consider each discipline in relation to the the other two. We must always consider opportunity cost and comparative advantage.

Unfortunately, we are not on the same page. The question has really nothing to do with all three sports. The question is "how much workload is required to get good at a particular sport."

I used the crappy running example in the hopes that there would be a bigger knowledge base. But the audience that really needs the most help is crappy swimmers.

So, if you want to relate this back to triathletes - it is my opinion that a triathlete that does not want to continually suck at swimming (or running for that matter) should go through lengthy focus periods, where they slowly work up to 8-10 hours a week in their weakness, keep that up for several months at least, before reducing it to a level that fits within an overall triathlete training plan.

For the record, I do suck at running, and might initiate such a plan if I ever decide to care about running.