A little training advice

Hello all I am planning on swimming the width of Lake Tahoe (10.5 miles), in September, 2018. I was wondering if some of the coaches, or senior members, or any one for that matter, has some suggestions on workouts for the pool (i.e. 12 week program TI style. Been doing TI for over ten years but mostly trained in open water, that part is easy for me. Please feel free to offer up some advice. I swim in a 33.3 yard pool and my stroke count is 20 strokes per lap. Thank you again for your help!

Keep Swimming!
Naji

[WFEGb]

Hello Naji,

think you should contact Mastercoach Mat Hudson at mat@mediterraswim.com. In his Swim-Dojo he has an eight months course for 20k, should be just the right fit for your needs...

Best regards,
Werner

[Tom Pamperin]

Originally Posted by Naji

Hello all I am planning on swimming the width of Lake Tahoe (10.5 miles), in September, 2018. I was wondering if some of the coaches, or senior members, or any one for that matter, has some suggestions on workouts for the pool

Naji,

I swam a 10-mile open water event back in 2015. I based much of my training on some of Terry's threads here on the Forum--I think they are mostly in the "favorite practice sets" section of the Forum. Well worth checking out. I think his thread on working toward his best 1650 was particularly useful if I remember right.

Basically, I followed Terry's lead and prioritized shorter repeats (I did a lot of 200m and 400m repeats) at the SPL I wanted to race at, gradually working to increase tempo while holding SPL steady.

I also did lots of Tempo Trainer work to increase my tempo at my chosen SPL.

10 miles is a fun distance to swim--welcome back to the Forum, and enjoy your training!

[Tom Pamperin]

Another thought:

You might consider doing some USRPT sessions at a target pace faster than the race pace you are aiming for. For a 10-miler, I might work toward sets like this:

30 x 100 @ 1:35 pace on :20 rest

If you're not familiar with USRPT, it works like this:

Swim each repeat at the target pace. Maintain :20 rest--that's crucial. If you miss your time on a repeat, skip the next repeat and rest instead. If you miss 2 repeats in a row, or 3 total, your set is over. As you repeat the set during training, you'll see improvements in how many repeats you can do before your first failure, and also in how many total repeats you finish. Once you can do the entire set without failing out, it's time to either increase the distance of the repeats, or swim at a faster pace (always maintaining :20 rest interval).

I've found these to be incredibly valuable, and I've learned to love doing these sets even though they are incredibly hard at first if you choose an appropriately challenging pace (for example, I might get only 5-7 repeats total the first time I try a set).

Thank so much Tom. I'll do that!

This is really good stuff thank you again Tom!