Monday, June 22, 2009

Sea swim!

It will seem an ungrateful complaint to those in northern climes, but the water is almost too warm! I must either swim further out or earlier in the day or perhaps both. I want to scope out a 200-yard "course" to use for the kind of open-water swim workouts that Terry Laughlin was outlining for use with the "tempo trainer" metronome - really it doesn't matter exactly what length it is (he is using a rope-measured bit in a lake), I should be able to figure out some good little stretch with not a ton of wave action that I can use. More on this later in the week.

20 minutes (c. 1000 yards)

2 comments:

sporn said...

Hey Jenny, a friend of mine recently swum the English channel - that's pretty cold (and filthy).

Here are some tips for open water swimming, if you're interested:

open water swimming tips

Unknown said...

To be honest, I think the tempo trainer is better used in a pool than in open water -- especially if you are trying to find the right cadence.

In a pool you can better measure distance per stroke (which is often less at higher tempos) and time (are you getting quicker with increased tempo, or expending significantly more energy for minimal gain?).

Once you really know what tempo you're shooting for, then the tempo trainer would be more useful in open water.

For what it's worth I would consider doing some sea swims that include using increasing/decreasing intensity based on stroke count but trying to stay "long and strong" ... say repeats of quarter build by 100 strokes, and descend 1-2, 1-3.