Originally posted by
austhokie Originally posted by
peteweb55403 Originally posted by austhokie seeing all these recommended volumes makes me feel like the training plan i'm using for my HIM (the tri-newbies HIM plan) is not swim heavy enough...right now i'm on week 10 of 18 and the swim is only 6750m (if I stick to the prescribed workouts)...wondering if I need to increase the distances...
Like with most plans, it depends on your ability and previous volume. For some 6k per week will help them improve dramatically. For others 6-10k won't even maintain current fitness levels. In my opinion you can also get away with a little less volume with more intensity. As long as your shoulders don't hurt, then most people put in time but it is not as hard as it really can be.
I guess volume wise - I used to swim in high school
(grades 8-10 in Australia
), but backstroke was my stroke of choice, so my front crawl is probably not as strong as it could be - then during college I pretty much didn't swim at all - probably took off close to 10 years...that being said, once I got back in the pool this last year, I was easily able to start at about 1200m and been working upwards... I'm kinda of in the mind that maybe I need more volume - but the sprints in the workouts i've been doing have been kicking my butt - this mornings main set was 10x100m with 15' rest...my goal was all of them below 2min - which I hit
(I told myself, if any of them were over, then i'd shorten my distance
) and I am seeing improvements
(I went from a 15:45 800m to a 15:15 800m over the course of about 4 weeks
) my gym has a masters swim program - but because I rely on public transport to go to work
(yay DC traffic
) - I can't make it in until half-way through the sessions - so maybe i'll look at exploring that option in the future
And do remember the part about how *well* you want to do at the event. Plenty have gotten through a HIM on 6-10k/wk and done ok. I did for a few. More recently I've wanted to do better than ok and also felt that swimming was draining too much out of me to really be able to run as well as I'd like to. And generally when one wants to do better, they need to figure out how to do more or get more out of what they are doing.