Ironman USA Lake Placid : Official Thread (Page 42)

Welcome Back, Rick.

Rick also doesn't believe in Running off the Bike.  Just an FYI.  

Short, hard Swim intervals are good and fine, but I don't believe they are going to help me stave off fatigue when I'm 1.9 miles into my swim with a half mile still to go.  If I've done Long Continuous Sets in Training and thus repeatedlly mimicked the fatigue I will feel 3,000 meters into the Swim, I feel my body will be better prepared and less fatigued come Race Day. 

Daremo - 2010-02-02 10:36 AM I never said long steady swims are not important.  Just like long bike rides are, it is necessary to have longer continuous efforts.

But that is NOT the way to train all the time.  In fact, it creates bad habits and reinforces muscle memory for slower speeds and potentially poor stroke.

If you include one longish swim each week then you are fine.  The majority of your work should be faster/shorter sets.  Still put in the 2500 - 3500 per workout, just not all at once.

And what are you trying to do DC, get me banned right away (which is what will happen if I make my typical response)??

The last thing I want is you or anyone banned.  I'm all about Love.  Seriously .  I genuinely hope your health issues get better and that you can train and have a great day in July.

JohnnyKay said the same thing to me about the Swim as you.  So I'll probably move toward a happy medium of your advice and what I think will work best for me.  For now, I'm going to swim Long Aerobic 2 X per week, Tempo 1 X per week.  Once I feel really comfortable swimming 4,000 meters, then maybe I'll switch to 2 Tempo, 1 long Aerobic per week. 

I can only go by my limited experience, and for my fith HIM race last October, I followed the BT Intermediate Plan and I did all the Swim Workouts that I was told to do (which included lots of Tempo and short sets, LOTS!) and come Race Day, halfway through the swim I started getting tired, and then for the very last leg of the swim I was shot.  My only conclusion was that none of the short sets in training truly prepared my body for the last half of that swim.  So now, based off that experience, my plan is to get comfortable with the full Swim distance first, then incorporate speed.  We'll see if  it works in July!

I've read about a lot of successful pro's and AG'ers 'shortening the course' by Biking 120, 140 and even 160 miles.  I'm going to try this approach with the Swim.  I have a HIM in May to see if it's been working.  My best HIM is 35 minutes.  If I can beat that time, I will have proven my method right, for me. 

Let me preface that I've only been swimming for 2 years. 

To me, doing short sets to prepare for a 2.4 mile swim is like doing 80% track work and 20% Long Runs to prepare for a Marathon.  And to take the analogy further, swimming is non-impact compared to running, which is very abrasive and harsh and requires 10X the Recovery time; given this fact, why would you not Train the Race Distance repeatedly, and over-train it?

So why not keep extending the sets to 1,000m, 1500m, 2000 Tempo ETC?  My Plan and others have you swimming 50m Sets a month out from the Race.  That just makes no sense to me.  I'm not trying to debate just for the sake of debate or to be a jerk, I just don't get it.  I'm an idiot when it comes to swimming, what can I say.

And I can't help but think if all the top swimmers Bryan mentioned, and including himself, if they trained longer sets and did multiple over-distance workouts, they would be that much faster in the water; perhaps beating some pro's even.