Bad swim training? (confession)

Triathlon Forum
1

OK, I know I’m going to get flamed here on this one, but…

I gulp swim all my workouts as straight out distances.

If I’m given a workout of say:

wu: 100swim, 100 pull, 100 kick, 100 swim
main: 8 x 100 EBEH
cd: 3 x 50, each slower than the last.

Here is what I do:
400 + 800 + 150 = 1350 yds (wow, nice easy day!)

That’s 0.77 miles. 35 laps (down and back - argue in another thread about what a lap is please) is a mile at our pool.

0.77 * 35 = 26.95 (27 laps )

So, I do 27 laps that day.
…
So, how bad is it that I only do the distance for my workouts? I feel really good, and can hang with the fast guys and gals when they are doing their workouts (and while they are resting and watching the clock, I’m keeping the pace up).

This sunday I did 2.5miles @ 1:18. Fast? No… I took it easy and went really slow so I got out of the water feeling fresh like I could have turned it on more.

My question is, what does all of the intervals stuff mumbo jumbo do for me? Am I lame or something because I simply enjoy doing the full distance freestyle and don’t want to bother with kickboards and such? (I can’t kick so I’m basically doing everything with upper body with only a minimal “balance” kick I hardly use).

Don’t be too hard, I bruise easily.

:slight_smile:
Trae
PS. I’m really thinking about the Chesepeake bay 4.4 mile swim as a goal after my first IM(IMFL - Nov 5th, 2005!). I think it’d be ultra fun. Has anyone here done that before?

2

I can’t speak for anyone else of course, but I’m guilty of the same. In 6 months since I started doing triathlons/training, I have “sampled” doing intervals on just one of those swim workouts. I don’t have the discipline to do a workout regime. In fact, I’ve never done interval training while running or cycling either. For that matter, I’ve never used a HRM, and have my first Half Iron in about 3 weeks. Oh, and I made up my own training plan for the HIM. I think the general consensus is that intervals definitely help your training, but it depends on what your goal is. If you just want to finish a race and have fun, do your training with that same goal in mind. If you’re serious and want to compete a bit, step up to intervals. I’m managing to place in the top 3rd in the last few races I’ve done without any of that stuff, but I would guess that I could do better with interval training.

3

““So, how bad is it that I only do the distance for my workouts””

Not bad at all if you only want to survive the swim and save the lifeguards a training exercise.

Not so good if you want to get faster.

Technique is everything in swimming. Lets, for the sake of simplicity & because I don’t know if it is good or bad, say that you technique is good. If you swim .75 miles at a constant speed, your training yourself to swim near that pace in a race, maybe a few, call it :30 sec faster.

Swim intervals and your avg velocity in a workout goes up. Design good intervals to train the various energy systems and now your more efficient, have greater fatigue resistance at higher velocities, can swim faster over longer distances, can swim faster over shorter distances all of which translates into expending less energy to go faster.

Which means your faster. The overwhelming majority of triathletes could spend $300-400 on a good stroke coach and drop three times as many minutes in one race as that new carbon go fast bike, new disc wheel and helmet will save them over two races.