Last swim March 11. Some stretch cords a couple times a week but nothing super consistent.

Saturday did a 1600 yard open water swim. Felt great to be back in the ocean. For me the goal was just to move my arms, swim super easy Other than for infotainment non-performance goals. If I kept it chill I was surprised that I felt as good as i did.

Even so the last 5 minutes I noticed some fatigue in the arms. I plan on going 2-3 times a week as i don’t see our pools opening anytime soon. For now it’s just for mental health

yeah, one of the keys is to start easy these first weeks, and also to focus on technique.
Even considering how slow I was, it felt good/relaxing to be back swimming.

As water temps have slowly increased here I've been able to get a few lake swims in. While swimming was never my favorite activity, it was amazing how overjoyed I was after completing a relatively short swim.

Just being in the water and moving my arms felt great, not to mention the help in improving my mood.

Suffice it to say though, any swim fitness I had certainly fell off in the last 9 weeks.

---

💀 Fxck Cancer Endurance Team 💀
⚡️⚡️ PLUSH Global ⚡️⚡️

I went 7 weeks without swimming for the first time in at least 20 years.

During the forced hiatus, I did pullups and band work with a fair amount of consistency but only 2 or 3 times per week.

Got back in Saturday, 9 days ago. I felt strong in the water but I felt very rusty.

First workout was 3000. I was 10% slower (not an estimate, actually went back and looked). The best 200 yards of the workout were the first 200. I had two gears, slow with a lot of effort and slower.

Did a 3500 and 3700 later in the week. Got progressively better each workout. On Saturday I swam a 2100 and was, not decent, but at least able to change speeds. I did a set of 4 x 50s, 4x 75s and 4x 100s decsending 1-4. My "fast" ones would have been okay swims on and okay day 2 months ago. But I could only do that once per group.

My 9 year old swam at a backyard pool twice per week and did the bands and pullups with me. He got faster over the 7 weeks and last week did a set of 100's holding 1:17s. That was what I averaged on my 4 x 100s. So the lesson here is it is good to be young.

One of the recent SwimSwam podcasts was with Rowdy Gaines, and they talked a bit about athletes being out of the water for extended periods. He mentioned the rule of thumb was it would take about half as long as you're out of the water just to fully regain the feel of the water. However, this is applied to elite swimmers that swim every day (sometimes twice) so it would probably take longer for triathletes without a swim background and who might only swim 2-4 times per week.

---

-----

Agree. The last time I was out 8+ weeks was with a broken foot. It took a month to get the water feel back and 2-3 months to get back into what I would call "IM swimming shape". Swimming is the least forgiving sport in terms of taking time off.

I'm in NY and our pool openings are nowhere in sight.

---

Strava

Great question and looking forward to hearing what people say to this!


Swimming is a "feel" sport so I would advise being patient and enjoy being back in the water. Worry about fitness with your other training.

daved

---

http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

I'm going tomorrow for the first time since 3/10. My Y reopened for swimming today, and they have 45 minute lane reservations at 1 swimmer per lane. I just plan to go and swim and do what I can in 45 minutes.

Did my first swim of any kind in almost 3 months, and was doing very little swim volume prior to then (1 3000yd swim/week with a few intervals). I always say that no matter how much or how little I swim, I go the same speed, and this was very little exception. Race pace is about 1:40-1:45 without current, and I swam pretty steady at about 2:00/100 without too much effort and upstream in the 1st half (fairly weak current, but enough for a noticeable difference in speed).

I'll be the first to admit that I don't like pool swimming- I go slow for a lot of effort, it's boring, and time consuming. I have been swimming about 1x/week to not lose my feel of the pool, but this was a good experiment to see what happened after a fairly long break from swimming. I actually feel really good doing no swimming, and running/cycling more (about 40-50 running and 250-300 cycling miles/week, total ~18 hours/week). I definitely feel comfortable in the future not swimming when I don't have a tri coming up fairly soon, and may even be able to drop my expensive Y membership (I can OWS for 6-7 months/year).

Suddenly feel a lot better. Firstly that my 'normal 1:43/100 isn't as slow as Slowtwitch would have me think (oh, remembered it's all about the bike and saving 0.01watts and 3s on IM split , don't care about the 15 mins lost on the swim, can't buy a carbon fix for that). And secondly that my 1:56 average for the 2800m seems to be 'par' for the slowdown. In fairness I've been doing some half hour open water swims for the last couple of weeks so I'm perhaps a bit further up the return curve than some others, but not much. Those had been at 2:12 reducing to 2:05/100 pace ocean swimming in a thermal wetsuit.

I've been doing no swim strength work at all in lockdown, just pilates for core 3 times a week. Back of my arms were feeling sore, and left shoulder towards back end of set. Squad was very much technique focussed today, alternating 100m of drill with 100m of 'swim'.

7 swims between May 5 to 18. I had about 7 weeks off and am bringing the volume back slowly. Should be at 8000 total yards this week - about 50% from before. Because of my age (62) I'm being very cautious not to overtax my shoulders too quickly. I expect to back to normal by the end of June.

<Trades 5min of reduced swim RPE at the beginning of his first swim for a lifetime of running improvement>

Good choice.

---

Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I did 45 minutes of open water swimming on Saturday.

First 15 minutes: this feels really good. I still got it.

Middle 15 minutes: yeah, I’ve lost it a bit. There are about ten things wrong with my form right now.

Last 15 minutes: this is a real grind. I have a bunch of muscles that haven’t been exerted in a long time. I need to power through this like in the last five minutes of a 2.4 miler.

All in, it was an encouraging experience. I did a week of stretch cord work at the beginning of this pandemic, before deciding the aggravation wasn’t worth the benefit. I suspect I could be back in full race shape in two months. Unfortunately, it will be a lot longer than that before there is a competition.

Been swimming open water the last month or so. Waters now in the mid 60s and rising so have switched to no wetsuit.

We have been lucky where I live...despite all the pools etc being shut they kept the beaches etc open as long as appropriate social distancing measures were in place and no more than 2 people were together. Our squad developed a squad within a squad and I have managed to swim 3 times a week in the open water since this all went down. Probably done more open water swimming in this 7 weeks then I have combined over the last 5 years. Averaging 12-15k a week. Have no idea how the pace is going as the garmin is so bloody unreliable in the open water, but seem to be able to hold 1:33/100m on 500m intervals in the open water so probably only 3-5 seconds off usual CSS pace.
The water temp is dropping here in the Southern Hemisphere so most of us have been in wetsuits, likely giving us some speed boost but I think overall it is comparable to some pool based times we have usually done.
Pools are starting to reopen but limited to 20 people in the complex max at all times, so need to book specific slots. Will likely stay in the open water despite the falling temps as long as possible until we can get more numbers in the pool.

Going back tomorrow. Will probs do 500m warm-up and then 10 x 100 on the 1.45. If go under 1.30 I'll be happy!

Lucky you

Swimming in low 50s with 2 neoprene huts double arm and legs ( from an old wetsuit ) booties and gloves lower 50s

Hey Mike,

It's too bad that swimming has not "done it" for you. It's such an amazing sport and skill.

One of the great, if not THE greatest aspect, of triathlon is to learn about and immerse yourself into the cultures of each discipline. I am biased bc I am a swimmer by trade (prior to biking and running and triathlon) but it has been so fun to get into the biking and running and then marry them all into our sport.

Wishing you continued luck. and I realize its just my .02
(didn't want to come across like a jerk)

daved

---

http://www.theundergroundcoach.com

Slow

I will second this. Running is my "native sport", but at times I have viewed myself primarily as a cyclist. But now I am primary a swimmer, who bikes well for my age group and runs horribly (relative to my former runner self). But learning the skills of swimming has been the most interesting part of my journey. In between I also became an XC skier in the winter as my primary sport (by definition skiers are cross trainers in the summer), so spent 10-15 years getting my skills to a really high level in that sport. I have been able to take that mindset to swimming....I'll spend a practice just working on my fly to back turns over and over and over. Just 4 years ago, I did not know how to do either stroke, forget about the turn sequence...its been a great learning experience.

No offense taken, I was probably being overly harsh on swimming as I really don't mind it once I get going, and I do enjoy open water swimming (at least in the rivers/lakes near me, with warm water, fairly weak current, and no ocean swells). On the bright side I only had a little soreness in my neck/back from my OWS, which I think was more from sighting than actually swimming!

For me swimming has been a lot more of a slog than the other sports because it's my weakest of the 3, and I do it entirely solo (as opposed to at least 2-3 ride/runs per week with others in non-covid times). I'm a very consistent swimmer and have great endurance, but I'm just slow (compared to people who know what they're doing anyways). I'm sure that it's all related- e.g. I haven't given swimming the same attention because I don't like pool swimming because I'm alone, and don't have the motivation to get better without having other faster people to chase after each week (then add in the extra time to go to the pool, and staring at the black line for an entire workout without podcasts...). I'm sure that I would get better and enjoy swimming a lot more if I swam with a group and was able to get some pointers on making my stroke more efficient- it's definitely something that I need to do to seriously contend for a 70.3 worlds/kona spot (along with running closer to my standalone paces off the bike).

This may be an n=1, but I do find it interesting how my bike and run have never been better with the sole focus that I've given them during covid. I think that's probably in a large part due to doing almost all structured training and increasing the volume/recovery/nutrition with WFH (and w/out swimming or needing time to go to the pool). I've also been pairing my bike and run workouts well to have them complement each other (this may sound dumb, but I've been doing 2-3 of my TrainerRoad workouts as running workouts in the same week). But part of it as well is that I've been able to shed some weight by reducing my upper body mass, which I was never able to do while swimming regularly. I can feel a difference going uphill while both running and cycling, and was even able to nab a KOM on a super steep climb that I would've been walking the 20%+ stretch in the past. Really good learnings for me personally about what works and what doesn't to get peak performance for each discipline, and a great time to do it with no racing minimally until August.

Be nicer. :)

Well... I felt great for about 100 yards. Then, my shoulders told me to suck it. My pace for the first 500 yards was not that far off from 10 weeks ago. But, after that, I was about 4 seconds/100yd slower. My last 250 yards were 10 seconds/100yd slower than the end of my prior swims. I am limited to just a 45 minute workout because of my pool's lane reservation timing. But, that is better than nothing. I expect to get most of the way back in about 2 weeks.

Thanks Dev,

I got a tad worried that my post was a little aggressive.

But I felt it was true. And from day one of triathlon it has been my opinion that the swims need to carry more importance. Clearly this has been discussed at length (and I wont get into it here) but it isnt the race that needs to change in my opinion. I would like to see more people really open up to the sports individually and get to know them. Its not like its going to make you slower. Actually the opposite. And I was def thinking of you when I wrote what I did bc of all the work you have done and how you have shared that journey.
I love each of the sports individually and while i certainly have preferences if I "had to choose one" but thankfully I dont!

Have a great day.

Mike, good luck! Id be happy to talk swimming anytime, I think my site is attached here. If not, dm me. No charge :) That goes for you too dev!!!

dave

---

http://www.theundergroundcoach.com