America Peals

PHOTO COURTESY OF GoldenStateImages,  RANDY MORSE.

Klatu verata nictu! In keeping with my learning about all sports and their respective trainings, JJ is back! And, with more to discuss with readers about recreational swimming and its training.

I don’t know about you but I secretly harbor the desire to do a polar bear swim one of these days…because I like pain.  And, with that promising introduction, I would like to share a TED video about a delightful creature you may meet if you should decide to swim in the open waters, the sunfish, or otherwise know as the Mola Mola. The Mola Mola was around 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs rocked the earth. They are a work of evolutionary beauty. Marine Biologist,Tierney Thys, is wildly funny.

Open Water Swimming – Training

BY JJ LESLIE

“Recreational Swimming” is an oxymoron. If there was such a thing, lifeguards would be out of a job, and we would all be fish. How many times have you decided to take a lap of a pool, made it to one side and felt out of breath, sore, and tired. And now you are stuck in the deep end! It’s true! The best swimmers live in the water.

For anyone interested in open water swimming, whether just to race, or to do a triathlon, or to really swim the long way across Walden Pond, training is an integral part of the process. I’ve been training for 25 years. I started going to practice one September afternoon in 1984, and just kept going. Two to three hours a day, six days a week, forty eight weeks a year, for thirteen years. Then college for four years where I spent up to six hours a day in the pool. And, now, the real world, where, on a good week, I am getting to a pool, pond, or ocean (the latter depending on the weather) three to four times a week for 30 – 45 minutes.

Though I could sound like a wise old man, and tell you countless training stories about hours of shared misery, I’ll save you the details and just tell you to give yourself the time to train to swim. I used to be a sprinter, training my body to explode physically for a 30 seconds or a minute, and then recover. Then why was I spending hours in the pool? Lots of theories abound. How am I getting through longer races today with less training? Different goals for one. I’d be in a very different training situation if I was trying to jump into these open water swims to win, rather then just swim to completion and not hurt myself. My point, if there is one to make, is that training in swimming is very individual. There is some overall things to think about that are good for any swimmer:

1. Think long term – It wasn’t until college, that I really fully understood how to approach training for swimming. Shoot for goals on a long term basis. Sure, every training session has momentary challenges that are worked through in the present. But, my coaches in college really made me realize that in swimming, looking at my results in three months, six months, and annual intervals was the most important. We started training in September for our first meet in November. That’s three months. But, our season was built around the fact that we would be swimming our fastest in February. That’s six months. In a perfect world, each year of the four years of college, our contributions to the team in terms of results would get better and better. We’d be swimming our best in four years. For most beginning swimmers, or even the semi-competitive like myself, I would try and think in 6 – 9 month goals. If you start training for a race in November, let March be a goal to move from the pool to open water – a unique swimming challenge. Then make July or August your date for your first race. What you start doing in November will make July possible.

2. Join a team – If your NCAA eligibility is long gone, or you find coaching to be invaluable there are countless Masters Swimming programs (http://www.usms.org/). Especially if you time is limited, and you have not been training your whole life, having a coach there to provide workouts, other swimmers for moral support, and the overall opportunity to combine practicing stroke technique, endurance and interval training, and strength and stamina training is invaluable. It takes a level of commitment in terms of time and finances, but most teams offer a variety of workout schedules, as well as access to competitions, and races. Most programs are designed for people to attend three to four practices a week, most practices being about 90 minutes long. Some programs are more intense then others. All are always recruiting, and offer free practice sessions to anyone who is looking to try before they buy.

3. Train with Intervals – The competitive swimming mile is 1650 yards (1500 meters). In a 25 yard pool that’s 66 lengths of a pool. In a 50 meter, Olympic size pool, that is 30 lengths. Most people facing that knowledge will start out just trying to swim that far all at once. To train your body, it’s better to built up your distances by attacking it with interval training. It forces your body to push itself harder, for longer, and conditions it to handle itself over a distance without it scrambling to just cope with the continuous stress of a race. In open water, that distance can be longer depending on the race course, currents, tides, and your own sense of direction. In a perfect world, a swimmer would train 3000 – 4000 yards/meters several times a week at a minimum just to prepare to do a mile. In serious swimming, total yardage swam would increase dramatically. If you just swam 10,000 yards, or about 10 miles, daily for several weeks, then swimming 1650 yards seems kind of easy. Built up the distance and time. Intervals will help.