How to make swimming less boring?

The most "fun" I ever had pool swimming was when I joined a swim for fitness class at the Y. Everyone in the class was a triathlete. We all challenged one another and goofed off too. It was really fun.

But that only works if it fits in your schedule or you can find a class!

I like to do intervals when I am by myself which makes the meters go by faster.

If you can get together with some other people you can race each other, do relay races, underwater swim contests. That is a ton of fun.

Haha I'm a computational biologist, I can do stats in my head. I can't do calc.

Find a long course pool. Do intervals. You'll be a better swimmer and less bored all in one.

I started swimming in an olympic size pool where a lot of good swimmers workout. I am a far better swimmer because of it. I also have more fun swimming than before.

Hmm... 

- calculate the survival rate of shark attacks in the pool

- determine the probability that you might be a bag of alien biological waste dumped on this planet by accident

- calculate the likelihood of a simultaneous mutation in all your cells that will make you win the next triathlon

- calculate the probability of a PR because of an instant of exceptionally favourable brownian motion

ok, this is more probability than statistics...

Wait for it . . . Masters.  Night and day from swimming alone, at least for me. 

Swim practice was a great way to cut down on homework time during high school and college.

I find working sprinting into a work out helps cut down on bordem.  Like do a set of (1X50 1X100) X however long you want to go.  Do the 50 and the 100 on the same interval, but do the 50 as fast as you can possibly go, like want to pass out kind of speed.  Then when you are done you have a 100 to recover, then you have another vomit inducing 50, it's a lovely cycle. 

www.h2oaudio.com

I have the Interval with an iPod shuffle and it's awesome.

If you do the 50 fast and the 100 slow, how could you do this on the same interval?  I'm done a similar set, but the 100 is fast and the 50 is slow on the same interval.  Just curious how you do yours.  Are you talking about the same rest period?  Apologies, because I'm not real good with swimming terms.  Thanks.

OK, I taught a class on Bayesian analysis, I can do this Most of my tri and running club are scientists or teach college, we have some seriously weird conversations while training. We were in Lake Placid doing a run this week, my phone rings, and I switch from talking about peeing on the bike to how a project is coming that I'm doing modeling a drug into a crystal structure, and back to bike pee, all in about 2 minutes. My friend could not stop laughing. Hey, bike pee is an important topic!

Some good ideas here, maybe what I really need to do is vary my routine more. I am doing small variations on the same workout every time I'm at the pool. Being a relatively new swimmer, this is all I know.

for example, you do everything on 2:00.  So you swim the 50 all out and say it takes you 40 seconds - you get 1:20 to rest and then do the 100 also on 2:00 and maybe it takes you 1:40, you get 20 seconds rest.

Pretend the old hairy dude in the speedo in the lane next to you is chasing you.  You'll find yourself pulling through the water a lot faster than ever before.

Hell, in high school I used to try to complete my homework in my head during swim practice.  When I was a software engineer, I used to try to write code in my head.  Now that I'm in sales, I try to get out of the pool as fast as possible.  LOL

x2.  Having some tunes to keep your head entertained while following the black line on the bottom of the pool for thousands of yards is very nice.

This is your problem for sure.  What is the workout?  We can give you lots of examples of other workouts to try to mix things up.

I do a warmup, then ramp my sets by 100 yards with 15 seconds between sets, then a cooldown. So maybe 300 yards w/up, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 400, 300, 200, 100, 200 c/d. I adjust the length of the workout by the longest set but still ramp like that.

Too much rest!

go harder in your sets. If you make it hurt enough you'll stop being bored. And you will get faster.

This has some good varied workouts (for free):

http://www.ntcmastersswim.blogspot.com/

- Try learning some other strokes? It seems to help strengthen complimentary muscles and make swimming free easier, but that's a side benefit of the boredom break.

I like pyramids (going up, then coming down) for breaking things up. That way, I'm getting longer when I'm fresh and shorter when I'm bored.

J

It's just an example to make the math simple.    

That being said, if you do something like this and truely do the 50s all out at vomit inducing pace, it won't seem like that much rest and  you will need that much to be able to maintain the intensity that high.

So that's a 1500 main set.  Try something like 15x100 where you descend  your pace times in sets of 5.  So from #1 to #5 you get faster each time and then go back to the time from #1 and repeat.  The 5th one should be at a pace that is pretty fast and you will be happy to be going back to the easier pace.

exactly