The December Swim Challenge: for the fish who just haven't gotten enough yet

Triathlon Forum
1

Okay, who is in for the December challenge?
Rather than set one goal yardage like we did last month, why don’t we all pick our own goal, and then we can list it throughout the month as x yds swum / x yds goal. The “winner” will be the person who meets the highest percentage of his/her goal. For example, if your goal is 100k and you swim 90k, your score is 90%.

I’m not sure what my goal yardage is yet. I’m swimming in a meet on January 14, and will taper for that - so I am swimming hard through December and tapering when January starts! This month is going to be focused on IMs and of course distance free! I’m trying to get my 500 time <5:50.

Anyway, happy swimming!

The list of participants is as follows - see below. Name, target yardage, and then how far you are. I’m not going to calculate the percentages until the end of the month.

Acephale — — 6000 as of 12/27

Aztec— 50k — 45,750 as of 12/30

Baldric ----90k---- 102,000 as of 12/31

CPT chaos —42k

cstine— 60k --44,900 as of 12/31

dawhead— 64k— 50,350 as of 12/31

devashish paul— 15k, revised to 25k---- 19,500 as of 12/27

edud —30k

fulla — 60k---- 39,900 as of 12/24

GhiaGirl—100k —25,000 as of 12/13

h2ofun – – 57,000 as of 12/20

imatopos—150k —130,000 as of 12/30

joonya — 150k — 93,600 as of 12/23

jpflores —50k— 50,800 as of 12/29

ksweet863 — 100k — 37,700 as of 12/30

MarkM— 100k----- 110,000 as of 12/28

mlbdenver—25k–29,500 as of 12/31

Norm —30k —27,200 yds as of 12/25

parkito --24k— 25,000 as of 12/20

pdxjohn — — 32,200 as of 12/31

saltman—50k—15,850 as of 12/17

Ted McGregor --160k – 93,150 as of 12/30

tigerchik— 150k— 134,800 as of 12/30

tri_2005— 75k — 28,150 as of 12/30

Hilighted names have met their goal!!! Congrats :smiley:

2

I am in! December is going to be a big swim focus month so I am especially interested in any added motivation to get in the pool day after day. Plus, my knee is a bit injured, so the running will have to be reduced over the next couple of weeks.

Regards,

3

Great!
I did a brick this morning: 40 min swim + 63 min bike. I’m going to say 2800 yds so far, I didn’t count laps. Swimming again at lunch :slight_smile:

4

I would love to get in one this just to jump start my swimming…but unfortunately, i still have remnants of a bad chest/throat/nose/ear infection…fluids still caught in my ear and may take “a few weeks” to full clear and balance…or so the doc says…so no swimming for me was the prognosis until it’s back to 100%…sucks
.

5

Feel free to join in whenever you can swim again! I hope you feel better soon :slight_smile:

6

i’m aiming at 16k meters a week (2x4k, 1x2k, 1x6k) for all of december, with 1 week of that in the ocean in costa rica. nothing close to the 100k goals set and met by some, but i’m sorry, i’m 43 and my hamster days are over. there’s only so much black line following i can do …

7

I’m in. I’m in the middle of a 16 week swim focus, and my coach is determining my workouts, so it will be up to him how much yardage I do. I’ll see if I can get him to push me up to 35-40K per week.

So, I’ll put myself down for 150K for the month and a 500 yards in 6:25 benchmark goal. Sub 5:50 is a great time for 500 yards! Maybe by late next year I’ll be lucky enough to hit 6:00 . . .

8

thanks. this sucks since this is typically a big few months for me (intensity wise) as I ramp up to our local provincial champs in March/April. nothing huge but i’d be putting in about 12K a week, although mostly focussed on 200s and 400s at near race pace (so more rest). coach’s philosophy to train that way so instead of going in for 1.5 hours and just swimming, we do lots of sets of 100s, 200s and max 400s…typically about 4k per workout…and it works well for me so far. first IM swim last year at LP and pulled off a 1:04 while staying way wide right the entire way around…I must have been 25-30m from the line except at the turnaround…I was as far right as you could get. figure if i stuck to the line i could have dropped below the hour mark since my easy training loop on the thursday was 29mins and that was sticking to the line. sorry, got a bit off track here…really missing the pool (as you can probably tell)

9

I’m new and I’m in. Sticking w/ the Dec. training calendar…30k yds.

edud

10

I’ve only gone sub-6 twice, but both times (a 5:59 and a 5:57 - Tuesday) were at the end of long, descending sets. The guys I am swimming with tell me I’ll go 5:50 no problem at the meet, we’ll see.

150k sounds good to me, I’ll shoot for that too.

11

I’m in for 100K.

12

I’m in for 60k (up from my 12k in November). And I’m shooting for 5:49 500free in Jan/Feb too! If you’re pushing a 5:57 at the end of workouts while logging the yards you have been doing, you should easily go sub 5:50 (especially if you give yourself a few days rest before the meet). I’ve got a long way to go to get there, but you gotta have goals!

13

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

15 min free w/u
5 x 1oo IM on 1:45 ~1:30s
4 x 4oo free w. :25 rest
4 x 3oo free on 4:15
5 x 2oo free on 3:00 hold 2:30s
6 x 1oo free on 1:30 ~1:17s (struggling with those today)
12 x 5o free on :5o easy
5 x 1oo IM on 1:45 ~1:25s
7 min back c/d

~2800 am + ~7300 pm = 10,100 as of 12/1

14

If your sub 6 at the end of sets durring practice you should be able to go sub 5:45 without a problem.

15

You know I am in, I am going to shoot for 50K in December after 27K in November. I started off by missing my morning due to the fact that I could no longer lift my arms after last nights 12x75 threshold set. I was pleased however to be holding 55-58 secs, giving me plenty of rest on th 1:35 interval. I will log some yardage this afternoon to get off on the right fin.

16

I’M IN!! I’m going to go for 75K. Can do that and maybe I’ll do more. Great motivation into December as I count Dec. as starting my new year.

Thanks everyone and have fun with it.

17

You know I am in, I am going to shoot for 50K in December after 27K in November. I started off by missing my morning due to the fact that I could no longer lift my arms after last nights 12x75 threshold set. I was pleased however to be holding 55-58 secs, giving me plenty of rest on th 1:35 interval. I will log some yardage this afternoon to get off on the right fin.

hard swimming is good! have a good workout this afternoon :slight_smile:

18

I am going to shoot for 100k, something I have never done. Despite a BIG snowstorm here in IL, I did get to the Y today and started off with 3500. Hope my elbows and shoulders can handle it!

19

I know that this is ultra lame compared to you folks, but I will give myself a goal of 15000m, which works out to 5K per week for the first three weeks of Dec. That will put my swim mileage for the year to over 200K which will be the most swimming I have done since 1995.

Dev

20

Sounds good!