I am having my arm twisted to do a 10K swim this July. Are there any bench mark workouts I could do that would give me a good indication of my preparedness?
I’ve been putting in 15-20K yards per week the past 3 months. 2 open water swims a week. I feel comfortable in open water. The thing that worries me most is my neck, shoulders and arms just shutting down around the 7.5K mark.
i dunno…swim 10k?
That’s one option…
You’ll be fine. Go into it with naiveity and you’ll get it done. Generally I find people can do anything once… even undertrained. For example, I know anyone can get through a marathon, be it run and walk, but its trying to get them to do the second one thats tough!
the first times scary(think back to ur first century, not metric).
What jack said try it, that’s the only true confidence booster.
Depending on your swim think hydration and fuel, if it’s solo u can jam gels in your suit, under a cap. Hopefully yours will have some support.
In the pool to build up endurance of shoulders head and neck, hold … Wait… Are u ready? I lift weights for upper trap stability, rotator cuff strenght, pilates for core and do hrs of pure pullng with big paddles. This may or may not work for you. If you’re trying to race it, I can’t help you as those in the front are in a whole different world.
Have fun and please post a rr as they’re not as scary on the other side, dare I say enjoyable.
you should start swimming more
.
I assume you mean to the op, as that was my thought. 20k in a week is a good start, but would want to see what the long swim looked like. He doesn’t want to be totally suffering out there. The water is not as forgiving as the land and cramps can cause serious problems.
Harbor Springs?
jaretj
Noblesville, IN.
My GF did a 10K two years ago. She is a pretty good swimmer.
We built a long open water swim on the weekend up to ~5 miles and kept the 3 weekday swims in a pool near 3000 meters. The pool swims were your basic interval type swims.
The open water swims started ~2.5 miles and built up to ~5 miles in about 3 months.
We were concerned with general health of body, arms and shoulders that is why we didn’t try to swim a 10K every weekend.
jaretj
Don’t underestimate the mental challenge. Even when I was training 18K per day, I never managed to go more than 5K straight in the pool. I find long distance swimming without the breaks of intervals to be like riding a trainer indoors. Its easier in open water since you are not tempted to quit every 15 seconds but some folks tend to go a little crazy after 2+ hours of continuous swimming. If all you’re worried about physically is getting tired at 7.5K, you’ll be fine. If you don’t make it it will be mental, not physical.
forgot about the mental. H20 audio, I swear by it, the other ones out there are better than nothing, but with h20audio one of my buds got his voice (no clue how) onto a mp3 player for me, and it actually helped to hear some voices versus the ones in the head torturing you to quit. If you can’t use music in the race at least training.
When the boat sinks a little over 6 miles from shore; other than that and some sense of accomplishment, there is not much reason to do it.
When I did the first two legs of Ultraman last year the 10k swim was a breeze. Just pace yourself, focus on your glide and relax. Hydrate a lot, assuming you have kayak support.
I had never swum longer than 4km when I did it. The biggest problem was not physical it was mental. 3:45 in the water is booooring.
…been on two runs and a ride, showered three times, it’s two days past your last swim and…
…you still smell like chlorine.
Then!..you are ready.
.
I had a buddy that did the Catalina channel this past year and I did a couple workouts with him and kept a close eye on his overallo training. That of course is a 20 mile swim, what I call a real endurance swim. 10k really is not too much different than training for the mile. Do what you are doing, I would push out the OW training as long as you can since that is where you find out where your weak links are. It wont be fitness, but something pesky like a neck pain, rash in some aggrivating place, seasickness, or some cramp in a place you never knew existed. You can only find this stuff by doing the 2 to 3 hour OW straight swims. You can also get your nutrition down on these. You wont need too much unless you are a 30 to 40 minute miler, I’m guessing the winners will be in around 2 hours or so.
Pool stuff can just be long low rest sets like 50X100 with 5 seconds rest, or any variation on that kind of set…Good luck, it will be fun, and take your paddler out on a few of you long swims to get to know the program. There are a lot of little things you have to work out there too, best not to have to do them on race day…
No Kayaks, but the race is reasonably supported. Its 2 x 5K loops. Gatorade, gels and water at the 2.5K out aid station and you can have your own nutrition at the 5K mark.
That will give me an opportunity to feed at 2.5, 5 and 7.5K. I can also keep some gels in my suit if necessary. Will defiantly work on nutrition in training.
I am 25 minute 1650 yard swimmer. I would expect I can easily hold 2 min/100m in open water for 5K which would put me at 1:40. After that I have no knowledge base to say I’ll stay around there or balloon quickly up. It could easily be near a 4 hours day though.
Sounds like the best thing I can do is schedule a 2 hour swim on Sundays and build up to 3 hours between now and July.
You might find this site interesting to poke around on. http://www.10kswim.com/mainMenu.html
Its aimed a bit more at semi serious racers but its got some good info. Check out the pics on the "Feeding’ link of guys with a couple gel packs stuck in their suits. Not a bad idea.
I did the 5k there a couple of years ago. My wife did the 25K. I may do the 10K this year but not sure yet.
My advice would be work alot on your head position and sighting. The distance wont be as difficult as it sounds, but when i did an open water 4 mile the thing that got to me was i swam with my head up the whole time and it killed my back. So my advice would be to work on keeping your body mechanics as natural as possible so that you dont accidentally fatigue your body in ways that you are not expecting.