Swim Training Update

My Swim Across the Sound team fell apart a few weeks ago. It happens. Folks have lives and real-world concerns, and for better or worse, not everyone can make themselves available on the first Saturday in August every single year. After all the years I’ve been able to rely on this same small group of people, it’s somebody else’s turn to do their part now. I reached out to the race director for help fielding a team last week, but before I did that, I considered just swimming the damn thing solo. Not because I wanted to but to smooth out the logistics.

In the water for the Swim Across the Sound, 2022.

I laid out a training plan and talked to my buddy Andy about it — he’s done a LOT of these marathon solo swims, including the Swim Across the Sound — and then I readjusted my plan. Could I actually do this?

Maybe, I think. My wife asked me if I could, and I told her that if somebody put a gun to my head, I’m pretty sure I could finish in order to avoid a bullet. I’d need to swim something like 30K yards/week for maybe three weeks leading up to the race, and I’d need to spend at last two months working up to that distance from where I am right now. Barring an injury, I *can* do it. But beyond the sheer challenge of the thing, I confess that I just couldn’t make myself excited about it. Andy does all that yardage with two-a-days, putting in as many as ten workouts per week. 

Honestly, it sounds awful. 

In some ways, remembering my own swimming career -- back when 30K would’ve been my weekly minimum -- now feels like remembering that time I had a mental illness. The way I had to think about swimming in relation to the rest of my life; all perspective simply fell by the wayside. I don’t know how to describe it to you beyond noting that it was everything until I got mono as a Firstie, and then, once I *had* to back off, I almost couldn’t make myself come back to the sport in earnest. That single-minded devotion had my friends at West Point calling me “Angry Dan” literally for years. 

Typical mood on an Army Swimming training trip

In the end, I threw my goggles away after my last race and didn’t swim again for more than a decade. Even now, the years since I started training again have been a struggle for balance as much as they’ve been anything.

Still, I got a lot out of talking with Andy. He trains much faster — and rests much more within each workout and indeed within each set — than I usually do, focusing much more on quality and much less on aerobic, Long Slow Distance work. I’ve been aware that modern swim training is different now than it was, that the kids don’t just grind mindlessly the way we used to. Not as much, anyway. They do a LOT more quality, uptempo work. Until I’d talked to Andy, though, I’d never really considered trying to adapt this to my own routine or even what that might look like.

Maybe that’s stupid. I don’t know. But I’m retired from competition, so nobody but me really cares how fast I’m swimming. Even if I went to the Connecticut Masters State Championship and won the 100 Fly, no one anywhere would care at all. I’d feel five minutes of pleasure then stick the trophy up on the shelf next to all the other trophies. The end.

This isn’t to say that I don’t want to swim well, however. I’m merely acknowledging that I already know when I’m swimming well, and that I don’t need anyone to tell me. I’ve been doing this since I was 10. I’m now almost 52. So that’s 42 years of consistent aerobic fitness and every bit of 30 years training in the water even with a 12 year break after college.

Can an old dog learn a new trick?

Up to now, a  typical set for me has looked something like this:

• 2 x 200 @ 2:50

• 2 x 100 @ 1:25

• 100 kick

That’s a base 1:25/100, and I’ll do it three times through for a total of 2100 yards as a Main Set, holding something like 1:20/100 or maybe just under that. My heart rate typically stays in the 130-135 bpm range.

Andy does this same kind of thing simpler but much more intensely:

• 20 x 100 @ 1:30, holding between 1:05 and 1:10

Longer intervals, more rest, astronomically more intensity.

Post-race (I think) at Crandall Pool, West Point, NY

I’ve been giving this a try, and friends, it’s been working. I still can’t routinely hit 1:10/100, but I am routinely hitting 1:15/100, and I feel better in the water overall than I have in ages. More like myself. Among other things, I feel like I’m swimming more correctly, so that once I get all the way warmed up, I can go faster than I have in ages and maintain that faster pace longer. Much longer. Even on sets with lower intervals, I can still go faster. Doing more speed work has me swimming better overall, which translates into a variety of different improvements across the board.

So. I still need to find some teammates for the Swim Across the Sound. But other than that, things are going okay, at least as far as swimming is concerned.