I try to swim at least 3-4 times per week and of those workouts, I usually swim 2-3 from a triathlete’s swim book (about 3000 meters in length each) and the other is a straight swim with not much of any intervals. For instance today I did a straight 1500 long course before I stopped.
What is the longest straight swim set (in a pool) you have done or is consistently incorporated into your weekly training?
I do a mile straight swim once every 4-5 swim workouts. Not for any real reason, just a good way to get in and out quick and still feel like I did something.
I also do 1,000 yard swims to start workouts all the time. I’m not a very good swimmer so might not be the best input. I just find doing one long set makes the yards go by faster.
here’s just an example of one of my straight swim sets:
500Free-100Back-25Fly-400Fr-100Bk-25Fly-300Fr-100Bk-25Fly-200Fr-100Bk-25Fly-100Fr-100Bk-25Fly-100Kick-25Fly-100Bk-100Fr-25Fly-100Bk-200Fr-25Fly-100Bk-300Fr-25Fly-100Bk-400Fr-25Fly-100Bk-500Fr
this straight swim gives you 4350yrds.
Now that my yardage is up, I like doing the IM distance non-stop maybe once or twice a month. Bilateral breathe, aerobic, and watch the improvement in time. I also take the 1000 yd interval times to check on consistency. I think 90% of the people/coaches out there would probably disapprove of this workout (short intervals, keep form up etc.) but I find it fun and usually do it on a day that I am looking forward to the long swim. Of course, I also get to do in in mid-afternoon when I usually have an entire lane to myself.
Not a great swimmer. Go totally by my IM workouts,which is all straight swims. Last years IM tim 1:07:50 hoping for a 1:05 or less this year(with my own wetsuit T1)will do a 5500 next week as longest.
I always warm up with 1000, and I train for sprint and Oly only.
warm up was probably the longest, or some drill sets than might get to 1200 but they usually had short rests say :05 or :10, unless we were doing 1k repeats. I rarely swam anything longer than 800m when doing 1.5k tri’s or the 1500m. There is no point in teaching yourself to swim slow. anyone can do that. Intervals make you fast.
just my .02 as former swimmer and swim coach
Once, and only once, when I was swimming in college, I swam 10,000 yards. It was actually at a reasonably good pace, given the distance, around 1:07/100 yards.
It’s probably not a bad idea to swim 4,000 to 5,000 every so often, as long as you can do it without compromising your form, because it gives you so much confidence in a shorter race.
I’m training about 3,000 yards per workout total since school is killing me right now. Last year in college we would open up swim practice with 1,000-2,000 yards straight swimming pretty regularly, but we were also swimming about 14-16,000 yards each day. I was a mid-distance swimmer so I didn’t do any of the crazy sets, but I know the distance guys would do 3x1650 race pace pretty regularly, and occasionally did 3x3,3000 yards. The most we ever did was 3,000 straight long course meters all out at the beginning of the season from which we were supposed to get a target pace for training in our sets of 100s. However, in high school my coach used to have us swim 5,000 yards straight once every season.
However, during training for IM USA in 2001 and 2002, I tried to get a swim of about 2,000 straight every 2 weeks or so, and I did a few 1-1.5 mile open water swims, but never swam close to the IM distance straight, just the usual sets of 100s, 200s, and 200s, and occasional 400s LCM. I think that strategy was fairly productive, as I felt great during the swim but missed the lead break each time and finished in 52 minutes both years.
Back in Jan and Feb I ran a swim training camp for my elite athletes where we finished with two days as:
Day 1: 10,000m am, 5,000m pm. Day 2: 15,000m am. Even coaching workouts that long is tiring 
Generally I don’t do workouts that long regularly…
Joel
I was more so wondering about straight swims, ie jump in and swim and don’t stop until 2000, or 3000, or whatever. Straight swim in a pool.
It depends on what mood I’m in but I did 1500 on Friday and I think I want to try something like 3000 this week? Boring? Good workout? What do you think?
OK, in that case then it’d be generally 3000 which would be the longest straight swim in the pool. Other long aerobic sets would be 3 x 1000 (Descending 1-3), 2 x 1500 (1 pull, 2 swim), or 2000 swim, 1000 pull, 500 swim, or 4 x 800 Desc 1-2. I like to use 3km time trial pace in the pool as the base time for aerobic endurance sets like the above ones. Going too much slower than that is less useful IMO. As far as beign a good workout - sure, especially for IM swims. Many ag’ers and masters programs mostly do short intervals, so doing some longer steady swims is an important part of a solid program and is more specific to triathlon swimming. Boring is part of it - think of them as a good opportunity to practise maintaining focus.
Joel
My usual Friday workout is a 1500 yard time trial. It’s a good way to test how my swim fitness is going. Unfortunatley my times seem to be slipping of late as my bike and run workouts intensify.
I usually do one straight 4000 yard workout 1.5 weeks before an ironman.
I’ve done 2 IM events. Before each one I made sure I fit in 2 or 3 straight swims of 3 miles. Which is all the training I did for the IM swim.
BTW - that would be way more mileage then I swim in a whole season of tri’s when I’m not doing an IM event. I swim…without lying…about 7 times per year. And most of those swims are races.
Longest straight swim set.
4000yds, once a week
jaretj
I do three swims each week. One is an intervals set, one is an extended endurance workout (e.g., 3x1500, 10x500, etc.), the third is an hour straight swim…just to see how far I can go. Currently my PR this year is 4150.
i think that unless you have a bit of background in swimming, anything over 800m on a regular basis is a waste of time. you can actually get pretty damned fit just from swimming 100-200m intervals.
I was never around for one of those 100x100 days a lot of swimmers talk about. Longest set I think we ever did was 75x75 on 75 (1:15)- physically is was a relatively easy interval, even if you were doing stroke for good chunks of it. The point of the set was more mental toughness than anything. I can remember getting pretty excited that we were allowed to swim the next 5x75 butterfly instead of freestyle because it would relieve the boredom. After a while, it would have been exciting to get to swim a couple of them trudgeon crawl while carrying a diving brick and using a band around the ankles.
And that pool had one of those digital pace clocks that counded repetitions for you, so you definitely did them all.
Longest these days is a modified fish burn set- short course meters:
5x100 on 1:40
4x200 on 3:20
3x300 on 5:00
2x400 on 6:40
1x500
total 3400M
(I can remember trying to make that set short course yards on 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30 and as fast as you had energy left to do back in college days)
I once coached a guy like you - he just didn’t have time to fit in any swim training. None. But he went to IMLP and still swam ~1.20! Not too bad…
Joel
ive done a couple of 100 km weeks for swimming. heh