Engner66 wrote:
Why so much rest? Anything is better than not swimming, but there are plenty of other options that you could be doing to prepare for an 1,900 m open water swim. -Same but a bit better: In at 1:50-55, out at 2:00, you will likely hit the wall after 3-4 but it will help you break from the 30 s rest.
-Continuous swim: stay in zone 2, the purpose is to build endurance not to go flat out. Try to build up to the duration of your 70.3 swim.
-Longer sets: 200, 300s, 400s, 600-800s. Again, rest should only be 10-20 seconds.
100’s with ~30 seconds rest could be very productive, as long as the pace was something a fair bit quicker than “70.3 pace.” I honestly think that’s a good idea for one of the two weekly 40 minute workouts, as long as there’s a push for progression. Call it the “power set.” Don’t just swim the same pace every week, try to do each week a little faster. If you can to the point where you’re able to hold 1:40’s for 16 straight 100’s on 2:15, advance the interval to 2:10 and see if you can hold 1:42’s on that. Once you can, start progressing the pace again. This is to build swimming strength. Also helps you build the muscle memory for a “higher gear” should
you need to deploy it temporarily in a race swim leg to get out of troublesome traffic and/or latch on to a potential draft opportunity .
For the other 40 minute session, I’d do 40min straight at “70.3 effort.” Get accustomed to swimming at that effort without stopping.
For the longer workout, I’d be working on something like 16x200 at slightly faster than 70.3 pace with intervals that allowed for something like 15-20 seconds rest. Again, the goal here is progression. This is the set where we try to build the muscle memory of swimming slightly faster than our current race pace, hoping to eventually make it your race pace.
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