Swim base training - advice?

I'll second that.

Definitely get some coaching. Maybe there's a masters session at your pool? With your self taught background I'd say the quickest way for you to improve your swim is to get lessons and do a ton of drills.

When I was swimming in High School I used to train about 18 hours a week, but any major improvements always came from changing something about my technique.

I use swimplan.com quite often to make my workouts for me. They let you select difficulty and ask what you are training for.

Just checking in again here. I took your advice and went to swimplan.com to generate a workout. 

 It gave me something like this for the "meat" of it:

3 x 100m, 15 sec rest 

3 x 100m, 20 sec rest

2 x 100m, 15 sec rest

2 x 100m, 15 sec rest

This workout was actually too short (I plugged in the 45-60min workout, but it ended in about 25-30mins), so I doubled it - first "set" with breathing to the left, and second "set" breathing to the right. Tough, but solid.

All at mod-hard intensity. I've just started, and have done 2 of these workouts, but I think the faster swimming is helping a lot. I'm sure my long easy base training swims of up to 60 mins helped a lot - for sure, I wouldn't have been able to do these workouts 8 weeks ago.

First time I did this swimplan "doubled" workout: Averaged 1:50/100m on left breathing, 1:46/100m on right breathing.

Two days later, same workout: Averaged 1:45/100m on left breathing, and 1:41/100m on right breathing. My first set on my right came in at 1:31 - I think that's the fastest I've swum, EVER. 

I'm definitely SOLD on the higher-intensity swims. Last question - should I continue some of those long easy 45-60min continuous swims (avg 2:00-2:10 pace), or should I keep "hammering" on these swimplan.com intervals? 

Shoot some video of yourself and load it up on YouTube -- there are some excellent coaches here that can offer you some free advice.  One catch is that the coaches might disagree!  The benefit with a single local coach is you'll get a consistent message.

$200 for three lessons strikes me as pretty expensive -- the best coaches here in Boulder charge $60 per hour and they are world class.

I learned to swim from scratch -- if you are like me then, four mths in, going "hard" just means your technique will get worse.  Like others pointed out, you want to reinforce good technique.  If you can only hold your stroke for 45 mins then that's enough -- hop out, go for a run -- or consider doing swim cords in front of a mirror to reinforce good technique.  You'll find swim cord tips here: http://www.endurancecorner.com/library/swimming/swim_cords

 You'll get a lot more benefit from 4x per week than longer, or harder.

 At your level, you might be able to hold decent technique for some faster 25s.  That might be something to consider -- still, #1 is learning relaxed, three stroke breathing for your goal race distance.  

I recommend that your program should be geared towards that goal.  If you can't swim for 60 minutes continuous without stopping then, odds are, you might already be doing most of your swimming over functional threshold (ie pretty 'hard').

A great skill to learn, for open water swimming, is the ability to change speed in the water.  Rather than swimming 'fast' for an entire interval, learn to pick up the pace for 25-100 then recover, while swimming.  Great skill to have.

 Hope this helps -- if you can swim for 75 minutes and you are only 4 mths in then you are making very rapid progress!

g

Thanks for the solid advice, Gordo. I will see if I can arrange a video shot of myself in a pool in the near future for some analysis online from all you great folks! I actually have trained to the point where I can do an entire hour of mod-hard intervals as listed above with minimal deterioration of form as measured by speed & stroke count - I just have a hard time swimming faster than my current pace and am looking to get consistenly faster. I do suspect that I am over-rotating, being a disciple of Total Immersion, and also suspect I have some issues with the straightness of my stroke, which probably veers over the midline from time to time. 

Last question - on my pull, my arm dips pretty much straight down with only a slight shoulder bend. I've seen videos of experts who have a much bigger elbow bend, however, when I try this, I lose a lot of speed. I feel like I can "catch" much more water by reaching out and deep as far as I can - is this a mistake?

Good tips on the 'why' of the high elbow.

With my own swimming, I don't have the ability to keep my scapula down when I try to swim like Phelps/Thrope -- as well, if I try to snap my forearm into the classic catch position a spend a lot of energy for little return.  

So, for an athlete with limited shoulder flexibility, enter down (not out) then pull straight back.  The sensation of pulling with a straight arm is how it feels.  When most of us "bend" our arms, what is really happening is that the elbow is slipping as the lat engages.  So the 'bend' is often the hand/forearm falling out of the pull pattern to reduce load on the back/deltoids.

 The great thing about this is video will show you pretty quick -- if you don't have access to an underwater camera then you can see alot of what's happening underwater with good lighting and minimal surface waves.

 Some swim tips from my wife:

 Continue to do the drills from last week plus: