My question is… I’ve added up the yards and converted them into miles for the week, and it seems that on week 12 I’m going to be swimming 7.8 miles. This sounds like quite a lot, but I’m still psyched about it.
My longest swim, indoors, to date is 2.5 miles in a single day.
Is this fairly normal distance for people who are new to 1/2 IM’s to be building up to? Does this mean that when I do my full IM training after June 5th that I might be doing upwards of 16miles in a week at some point of swimming? That just sounds insane. (not that I won’t do it!
Your total adds up to a little over 13000 yards, which is a big on the high side for an average week of swimming for a competitive half IMer. That said, this is a swim focus week for you with six swim sessions.
Generally speaking I (and others I know) do about 10,000 yards per week during three sessions (3000 yards being an average session).
Thats more miles then I swim in a whole year. Not counting races, I swim about 2-3 miles per year! Can you tell I hate swimming. The race starts with the bike!!
That does sound like a lot for a 1/2 IM, at your pace … That’s about 12,000 yards for the biggest week, which for you will be … 6 hours in 5 sessions or so? Not too ridiculous if most weeks are 6-7,000 yards (3+ hours for 3-4X a week). Can’t hurt if you can fit it in! Good job on swimming 96 min. BTW, that’s great! But I don’t think there’s much benefit to ever swimming more than 2 hours.
I’m loosly following the “intermediate” 1/2 IM program from trinewbies and the biggest swim weeks are 7-8,000 yards (4 X in one week, about 7-8 weeks out and again about 3 weeks out). I can’t imagine a 1/2 IM swim program being too different from an Olympic distance swim program since you only swim 500 more meters in the race (7-10 minutes more)
This season, I’m way ahead of schedule swim-wise, which is cool. My “big” swim week will be about 11,000 yards. To put things in perspective, a big swim week for an elite IM person might be 30,000 yards (about 7-8 hours i bet cuz they are fast) and I think Phelps does 50,000 to 80,000 yards a week. Train hard and good luck!
It all depends on your goals and your relative strength in the three disciplines. Assuming your stroke is good, you can’t do too much swimming, i.e., unlike running where you can have repetitive stress injuries, it is possible to swim 13,000 yards a day all week with no ill effects… Well, you’ll be a bit slow, but your endurance will be off the hook!
As a competetive swimmer, we used to swim 10,000 yards a day minimum and usually 6 days a week. I started masters swimming before I decided to get serious about triathlons, so I’m usually FOP on the swim (top 3 in my wave). My program used to include 6 swim workouts a week at about 3500-4000 yards. My best year in the sport so far included a swim-focus February of 264000 yards (150 miles) with a high of 21000 in one day. I sucked at sprint swims in March, but kicked ass all summer.
This year I’m focusing on running, so I’m not swimming as much. I just came from a swim meet yesterday, and I’m slow… painfully slow. I need to get swim yardage back to 15,000+.
What does this mean to you? If you’re a weak swimmer, then go for the 13,000 yard weeks. It makes you fresher on the bike if you aren’t exhausted from the swim. I can do 1.2 miles in 26-27 minutes and if I do it in 29-30 at a half IM, I’m ready to hammer on the bike right out of T-1.
So if your weakness is running (as mine is) then maybe you don’t need so much swim time. OTOH, 13,000 yards in three swims doesn’t sound like much to me. Swimming keeps you loose and is a great antidote to sore legs from a gonzo track workout or hill repeats on the bike.
For me, I personally seem to enjoy the swim the most. The bike is becoming my 2nd favorite though. It’s a toss up at this point.
I want to try and get down to a 1:20 or so on my swim, and if I can turn in a good time on the bike, this will allow me to crawl to the finish line on the run for my Ironman.
Occy, do it. I did this in my picklehead week a few weeks ago. I usually only get to swim twice a week right now, so my total distance per week is about 5-6km. But a few weeks ago, I did a major swim week, swam 5 times, and clocked over 13k. I am by no means a fast swimmer but I just chopped 3min off my 1500m time (LCM pool). I am way more comfortable in the water, my balance and body position is far better, and my catch is way stronger.
I’m planning on doing my first half IM this summer. I probably won’t swim more than 7,000 to 8,000 yards in any week, but I used to be a competitive swimmer so I don’t have to worry too much about that, but do need to work on my BOP biking. I think that the swimming distance in your program makes sense for someone that needs to do more work on the swim than I do.
You can get overuse injuries from swimming, most likely in your shoulders, if you swim a lot more than you are used to swimming. So, pain in your shoulders is a warning sign that you might be swimming more than you should be swimming.
