I have zero swim background and I cannot do low volume swimming and expect to swim well. I'd say an absolute minimum volume for me / week is 7500 yds. That's to get to a level where I can swim near the rivet and still bike and run well. And that's almost all hard yardage only freestyle. That's what I need.

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24 Hour World TT Champs-American record holder
Fat Bike Worlds - Race Director
Insta: chris.s.apex

If you have good technique, you obviously don't need as much power (and therefore fitness) to maintain your "within 2 minutes" pace. Others will need consistent swimming week-in-week-out to remain close to that.

FWIW, I spent many long hours in the pool last summer in an effort to get my swim up to scratch. I'm still far from the front, but I cut my swim down from 38min to 31:30 on the same HIM course, coupled with pool times dropping from 1:55-1:50 to 1:35-1:40 per 100m. More importantly, the peaked swim fitness allowed me to get on the bike fresh. So there's definitely a benefit to swimming well...

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

Yes, that is very true for most people. Swimming is about body position and feel for the water. If you swim enough in your past to build a good stroke and good feel, you get it back very quickly when you jump in the water again.

I went sub 1hr on 10 weeks of swimming roughly 1-2 x 2000m workouts.

It depends. If you're a fast swimmer, it takes a lot to get there, and some effort to stay there. If you're a crappy swimmer, you obtain a level of mediocrity which isn't too difficult to maintain.

Let's say you want to be within 10% of your best time. Who needs more effort to get there for an Oly length swim? The 20 min guy doing 22 min or the 30 min guy doing 33 min? Of course depending on what you mean by "fast" maybe neither is fast and you are talking about a 15 min guy, in which case I'll admit to having no guess as to what happens to 15 min guys since I don't know any.

I go to the pool once per week.
Paddles, pull buoy, bands, snorkel, mp3 player, fins, swim cap, water bottle with electrolyte mix, garmin watch.
Do a single 50, then i get out.
Done
Bam!
Strut back to the showers.
Give the lifeguard a slap on the tush and a single pistol as I strut by.

Yep. ... I would say most anyone with:
1.) A couple dedicated seasons under their belt (say 3-4 x45 min a week for 6 months of the year),
2.) decent technique (a fluid 3+ minute 200 yard free off the couch)
3.) a couple seasons of OW swimming, comfortable in cold & chop (dozen times a summer?)
.... can get away with 2 swims a week for 3 months a year most years and barely lose a beat in races shorter than Iron Man ...
... This cannot be done with running. Imagine running just 3 months a year, building from 10 MPW up to 25 MPW or so. Then quitting and starting all over again in 8-9 months.
NOT something I would ever consider.

LIKE A BO$$

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Aaron Bales
Lansing Triathlon Team

haha!

I think it's also dependent on what kind of time you are talking.

Are we talking about a swimmer who in their best shape would do a 28 minute Oly swim and their slacked off time is a 30? Or someone doing 21 going 19 in shape? The difference is massive. Technique is severely limiting one, fitness another. A technique hack can't do a 21 under any circumstances and someone with great technique can't swim a 30 minute Oly unless the have an arm tied behind their back.

You are talking in huge generalities. 'Ok swimming background'. What is that exactly? Ok for a triathlete? Ok for a swimmer? Comparing the two is like trying to draw similarities b/t Hillary Clinton and Lena Headey. At the end of the day for someone that hasn't been in the water most of their life, if they are doing at least 10k a week then I feel they should probably throw all expectations out the window.

Here is a dichotomy of your 'sweet spot' analogy. I just finished my longest week ever with a shade over 30k. 5-6 days a week and a couple of 2 a days. I focus on pool sprints, managed a 58.xx off a push in a workout last week. I swim with a former D2 kid who finally after coaxing repeatedly has decided to swim with me a couple of times a week. He had been on the couch for the past several years, is probably 20+ lbs overweight. He was a sprinter too. He can destroy me on anything and everything and if he has swam 40k since coming off the couch total it's a miracle. His sweet spot is.....nothing? Mine is 30k for my fastest times ever.

I intentionally made it a bit vague because I'm curious about how it applies across a range of skills. For me specifically I'm talking about an oly PR of about 21.

I swam a 33 at Lake Stevens 70.3 last year on 25 swim workouts... I swam a 32 the year before on about 35 workouts. I plan on doing about 40 swims this year before Whistler and expect to be in the 1:05-1:08 range. I'd rather put the majority of my work into bike/run improvements over swimming enough to hit a 1:01-1:03 swim.

My swim background was up to about 8th grade at a fairly casual level but I guess the technique is there. In talking to the swim coach at my club, he suggests mostly pull work since my stroke is decent and it ramps up strength/endurance pretty quickly.

Well 21 is a fine swim and you can't have any huge faults if you can get a 21 on the books and it's a a true 1.5k. A 21 is 1:17 and a 23 is a 1:24 in yards. For *me* oddly the 1:25 range 100 pace in a pool is where my coach started to take me off the steady diet of technique and put me into 100% set focus a copule of years ago. After a couple of OW's this spring I feel like that still rings true for me. I have zero threshold training under my belt it's all ultra short race pace training, but I was 1:23 per my bud's fancy split watch last time out.

Dunno, will be interesting to see what you find so please update! It was about this time last year I was asked if I would do the relay at Great Floridian. I entertained it for about a week of threshold sets and said 'fug that!'.

Well...I'm about to find out. After having my biggest 4 month swim block ever last summer (averaging 11k per week)...I haven't swam at all since October. Planning on getting in the pool in the next few days to prepare for the one tri of the year I plan to do in late July. Only a 750m swim (40k bike, 10k run), but I don't imagine the results will be pretty.

ETA: my plan for now is to just swim maybe 3-4k per week till late June, when my important cycling races are done then increase to about 5-6k per week the last 4 weeks leading into the race. I fully expect my swim to still suck...as I imagine 6-8k...consistently for 10+ weeks is a bare minimum for me. I feel a lot better in the water when I average closer to 8-10k on a consistent basis. Still slow...but just feel better.

I have said it before but will throw it out there again, swimming is almost entirely technique and your question gets to the root of why I am so confident about this. I was a good college swimmer, but I was a sprinter, almost never raced anything over a 200 and would struggle to finish strong even still. Fast forward a couple years after college I jumped back in the pool for Tri. Did an IM my first summer of Tri swimming 3-4 times per week, swam a 56. The next year I swam a little less and biked/ran more, swam a 55. The next year I swam twice a week for a total of about 6k and went a 52. In between each season I took at least 4-5 months out of the water. I found that I gained more fitness doing steady effort bike and run stuff and just practiced my technique a few times per week for about an hour to keep a feel for the water. Now I do mostly just Olympic distance, last season my 3 OLY splits were 19 low (course was short), 20 mid (solo effort, everyone drafting off me), 19 mid drafting in a group. There were at least 3 times last season where I was out of the water for over 2 weeks straight, the last time was only a month out from the last race. Clearly swim frequency or even consistency aren't that important if you have a well developed stroke. To be fair, it took 9 years of competitive swimming to develop the stroke, and I can't touch the times I was doing in college for short stuff. Interestingly though, my best (and only) 1650 was about 18 flat so I am not really far off my best there.
And all the above applies for my wife, this is N=2 here. Though I admit she is a little further behind her college days where she was sub 17 for her mile, now she splits about 20ish for an OLY and did 51 and 52 in her IM races.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

This must be the duathlete thread...

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

Yeah. I am about the same. My swim fitness goes down but my paces don't change. When I leave and come back to the pool I am the same speed I just get tired more easily.

I am a FOP swimmer. I grew up doing it. I think I could swim once a week and still have fairly front of the pack times. I swim six times a week because I like to do it.

I think most triathletes don't swim much because they don't like it.

I think triathletes would swim more if they had more open water opportunities. I think the pool and the black line is unappealing for people (... though it is not different, to me, than the trainer or treadmill).

Note that not being tired when you get out of the water is going to help the rest of your race.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

My yearly total so far is 900m. I have a Half Iron in July. Lol.

I've swum 224,000 yards year to date.
Bike time: a bit under 3 hours year to date.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I actually think the important point with low swim volume is the affect on the rest of your race - certainly at HIM distance and above. Even with low swim volume you can probably maintain close to your best times, however I'd say you expend far more energy and thus have slower bike and run times.

I normally swim around 12K-14K per week across 4 sessions and generally swim FOP. In the 8 weeks leading into my last HIM I probably only swam on average 5-6K per week, sometimes less. I still swam the same time (around 27-28 mins) but I suffered more on the bike and run and ending up running 4-5 mins slower than normal. No way of knowing for sure but I certainly felt the low swim volume meant I got onto the bike far more tired than normal.

I don't maintain my swim volume to get any faster, for me it's more about coming out of water having spent as little energy as possible and ready for the bike and run. If I wanted to see any noticeable improvement in my swim times I'd probably need to be swimming 25K+ per week (not possible in my circumstances).

I'm a big fan of maintaining swim volume so as to be strong for the bike and run rather than looking at it purely from a swim split perspective. My training hours are roughly split 25% swim, 50% bike, 25% run.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. Giving up 2 min on a 20 min swim is like giving up 6 on a 60 min bike split. Also, the overall winner of your aquabike will likely go somewhere around 1:15-ish total time, or around 75 min, so giving up 2 min is about 2.7% of this time. You might finish top 3 overall with a 2 min faster swim, but with the slower swim you end up 2nd in your AG. How will you feel then???

Swim hard and often. Be the best you can be in all aspects of your race.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I'll chime with my most recent, infrequent Tris.
2 years ago on 4 1500 yard workouts a week apart I finished MOP in an Xterra swim. Left shoulder totally gave and my left arm was useless. Started at the very back of the wave. Passed about half of them. March race, about 1/2 mile, about 58 degree water. I was only person without a wetsuit that I saw. 15:59. Very disappointed with time, fairly happy with placing on no training.

Two months ago did a short reverse tri . Didn't touch a pool since that Xterra two years before. 200 meters in a jungle. Third fastest swim split in my age group. Probably top 5% overall swim split. 3:50 split that was timed from just before to just after the pool. I think I shoulda been a minute faster and it hurt a lot. Pretty happy with that AG split place, though.

I don't advise swimming that little. YMMV.

No swimming background.
Doing tri for 16 years (started when I was 35).
Record low swim volume last year. Less than once a month in the winter, twice a month in the summer.
Did my best IM swim in September:
- Out of water as number 300 of 1700 competitors , 15 in my AG - swimming very relaxed, not spending too much energy. (I knew I was not fit to swim hard).

And it did not have negative effect on the bike - was first in my AG into T2.

Of course, this don't prove anything - just shows that it is possible to maintain OK swimming on low volume. Of course I don't have a clue of how fast I could swim with more volume - and how increased time spent on swim sessions (giving less bike/run training time) would effect bike/run.