2008 and 2010 were my best recent swimming years. Coincidentally, those were the years I had my biggest swimming volume. Those years I was swimming 16K a week. Most other recent years I've swam in the 9-10K range.

This year I'm doing something different. I'm doing my normal 9-10K in 4 swims and adding 2 short days to it. Those short days are 3X500, first one is the warm up, second one is just over T pace and the last one is under T pace (T pace is my ave 1500M pace)

Workouts I'm doing are just straight from the Workouts is a Binder Book.

jaretj

Gomez and brownlees only swim 20 to 25km per week according to what they've said - that's around a quarter of what some top distance swimmers do per week...

Isn't giving up 2 min on a 20 min swim like giving up _2_ min on a 60 min bike split? The reason I phrased it as "sweet spot" is simply that I'm time constrained (and recovery constrained) to roughly a certain number of hours a week. Those will either be spent swimming or biking for me. Presumably there is some optimal split of the time I have for producing the best total time. I think in the past I assumed it was about 1:2 with about 4 hours swimming and 8 biking (although at points I was closer to 6 hours swimming). Now I'm not so sure it isn't 1 hr swimming, 11 biking. I will admit that I'm not sure the 8=>11 hr bike change gets me >2 min on an Oly bike; it was more targeted at improving road racing. I do know that after bike focus in the fall I did a HIM bike leg as part of a relay and beat my best time on the course by ~15 minutes. Clearly some of that could be due to good conditions and being a not having to swim first, but it was still a big improvement.

Regarding how I'll feel about my race if I'm 2nd. I seem to be a 2nd place magnet in aquabike. I've done that a number of times in the past and I'm usually pissed :) However, I'm usually most pissed when I didn't execute my best race, not due to the place. I lost one race due to making a small course mistake and another due to bonking from bad nutrition decisions, those burned. I expect I'll finish with a total time in the ~1:25 range (:23 + :1 + 1:01) and will probably be happy for anyone else who manages to beat that on a fairly hard course (Columbia Tri). The aquabike events I've done are generally small and you never know who shows up for aquabike events, sometimes some rockstar who happens to have a recent running injury comes in and blows everyone else away. Its hard to be too mad about those guys beating you. I have no delusions about being the absolute top of the heap, so if you get beat by someone faster there is no shame or anger. Bike racing is good for learning that; regardless of what Cat you race, there is pretty much always someone else embarrassingly better than you.

My other rationalization is that I don't have any other swimming races this year, just a bunch of bike races :)

See it often,

If your baseline is 21, you can work your ass off in tri terms (18 to 22k per week for 8 weeks) and get it down a little bit.

You can swim twice per week and go 21 high or 22,

You can not swim at all and go 23 high.

You can swim your ass off in adult swimmer terms (35k per week for 10 weeks) and you'll get to 20 low or 19 high.

I tend to think 3 swims a week for 10-12k yards is a minimum for me and my point of diminishing returns for those that are time crunched. However, I think there is a hidden benefit to swimming more for increase aerobic training load without inducing more leg muscle fatigue. The increased blood flow to your legs can also speed recovery, which is helpful for 3-a-day workouts that include a bike and run on the same day. My Mon-Thur morning usually has 11 workouts within 80 hours and makes up 1/2 my weekly training load. Swimming not only adds to the bulk of that load, but it also allows active recovery between sessions to a certain extent.

Swimming more also means that no matter what speed you swim, your likely to be "Fresher" coming out of T1.

There's also the tactical advantage in larger races, that being even just 1 sec faster per 100y, might save you 2 sec and use less energy, if you can latch on to a faster group. A lot of the swim comes down to how fast your opening 500y is compared to everyone else to determine which group you get to swim with. The packs are often 60-90 seconds apart. So swim times are often in steps, not even gradients. So for example, I might have enough speed this year to latch onto the next faster group in that same race. That would put me with guys that are riding 2-5 minutes faster on the bike.... putting me as one of the slower cyclists in that group as opposed to one of the fastest cyclists in the other.

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When I was active in triathlons, I was also doing a lot of bike races. My swim volume (outside races) was approximately zero. Because I am a very weak runner, any time I had available to train that I wasn't cycling was put towards the run. Even so, I managed to lollygag my way to a couple of 30 min half IM swims. the first was in a wetsuit I borrowed that was about 2 sizes too small, I could barely lift my arms over my shoulders in that one. The second was sans wetsuit, and in both, the goal wasn't to swim fast, just to get to the bike fresh. the goal on the bike was to get to the run relatively fresh.

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

"Isn't giving up 2 min on a 20 min swim like going up 2 min on a 60 min bike?"

Well, I suppose it depends on how you look at it but I was going with the old-fashioned concept of percentages. No doubt that 2 min is 2 min no matter how you look at it but, on a % basis, 2 min is 10% of a 20 min swim and 6 min is 10% of a 60 min bike.

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

I fall into a category similar to your D2 swimmer. I swam competitively for 10 years then pretty much stopped altogether, only hitting the pool a couple times a year. In my first Oly (five years after I stopped swimming) my swim split was a 20:50. The technique will always be there for me, regardless of where my fitness is.

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It's easy to make excuses, but excuses don't make champions.

As others have said, swimming fitness is not just about your time for the swim. It's probably even more about getting out the water feeling fresh.

Lack of swim fitness can have a dramatic impact on your bike and run splits.

Also, I think that swimming is much less about volume than frequency. If you swim regularly you're much better off than - unless you are an ex-swimmer - doing a couple longer workouts.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

That's a good point and in fact was exactly the sales pitch my masters coach first gave me when I first considered joining masters. Does this matter as much for short course as long course? I haven't actually tried a race under-prepped for swimming, I was just considering it this time around. On the plus side, I usually ride my bike to/from masters, so it is easy to do a few tests of how I feel going hard on the ride home after a hard practice.

Interesting feedback Kevin. This actually underscores the importance of taking some time to learn how to swim. Spending a solid block focusing on swimming could pay off for years. I don't think cycling or running works that way, it is more like use it or lose it there.