On Swimming Fitness and Triathlon

There is a thread over on Slowtwitch that I’ve been following: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/Slowtwitch_Forums_C1/Triathlon_Forum_F1/QFT%3A_Paulo_Sousa_on_Swimming_P3698825/

To sum up the premise, there is an intricate link between swim technique and fitness, and that one needs to work on both, and that sometimes the answer to the question as to why the technique is poor is to swim more.

I remember back 2 years ago when I embarked on training for Ultraman Canada and would report in on how much I was swimming, and I received comments from several people that I was swimming “too much.”  I did not think so, based on the number of years I’d been swimming (10, mostly self-taught) or the amount of yardage I typically did (I was averaging about 9,000/week the year before).

Now for some people, perhaps younger women or men, swimming fitness might come along quite nicely on what I had been swimming in the past, but for whatever reason, I felt like I needed to do more, in order to be able to swim 10k THEN bike 90 miles THEN get up the next day and bike 170 miles THEN get up the next day and run 52.4 miles.  

When I first began picking up the yardage, I would experience rather gnarly upper back muscles—ask my massage therapist!  It was like the first year I trained for an Ironman where my body was beat all to hell because of what I was throwing at it.  But as I got used to more and more swimming (still nothing compared to a “swimmer”), my body got stronger and I have to believe I became a more “fit” swimmer, and while I still experience “aerobic fatigue” after really long swims, my muscles are just fine.  I’ve been told since that time that my stroke has improved, too, so based on my N=1 experiment and the fact that I was able to complete Ultraman and not feel too badly, I feel that I did the right thing for myself.

If I had begun swimming when I was a kid, or maybe if I had begun swimming even 20 years ago rather than just over 10, or maybe if I was in my 30’s or 40’s rather than 50’s (where I have to fight to maintain muscle mass), then perhaps I wouldn’t have needed to swim that much more for Ultraman.  All I know is that I did not want my biking ability to have suffered from being preceded by a 10k swim.  

Now even though I have increased my swimming, I haven’t increased it that much.   It’s not like I’m banging out 20,000+ yards per week—I only went up to about 12,000/week average.  I can’t prove this either, but it seems the increased swimming has made me a better biker and runner.  I’m not saying faster—rather my overall aerobic conditioning has improved and the longer stuff feels easier.

Have I become a faster swimmer?  No, but I can maintain my Ironman swim pace for really long distances now.  Now I am working on shorter, faster stuff in the pool, too, but I am more concerned with becoming a more fit swimmer, which to me might consist of increased speed at short distances, but also the ability to hold pace over longer and longer distances.  I’ve read that among the 3 sports that swimming speed declines the most rapidly as we age, and so I am just trying to stay ahead of the curve and not get any slower.  If it’s true that swimming is most impacted, it behooves me to work more on swimming, especially since it doesn’t have the cost of trashing my legs like biking and running do, and is much easier to recover from (at least when the swim is 2 hours or less!).  

I am lucky in that I live ½ mile from my pool, so I don’t incur much travel time, and I even like walking there and back in good weather.  If I get motivated again this summer, I’ll ride a bike to the outdoor pool that’s 5.5 miles away, because even that noodling around biking improves my bike fitness.  

What does all of this mean to someone training for an Ironman or longer in terms of how much swim training they do?  I think it depends on your swim background, time available to train, age and proximity to a pool.  People always talk about how you really need to bike A LOT to be a good cyclist and how it takes up the most of your training time, and also how you need to run A LOT to be a good runner but you need to be careful how much you run so you don’t get injured while also biking a lot, but then many people say swimming is “all technique.”  I call bullshit on this based on my N=1 experiment.  The more I swim, the more my brain seems to figure out what my body is doing in the water and has more of that kinesthetic sense (aka “feel for the water”) that eludes the less talented swimmer such as myself.   How do you measure your swim fitness?  I think a good test would be swimming a lot and then getting on your bike and seeing how much your power output deteriorates as compared to someone who is a “better” swimmer but equal cyclist.  

Everyone is obsessed with training producing more speed, which is logical, but in triathlon, if you can’t bike for shit, your run is going to suck; if you can’t swim for shit, your bike AND run are going to suck.  It all comes down to how much one is willing to sacrifice in one sport’s training at the expense of the others.  I don’t plan on setting a swim PR at Ironman Canada, but my hope is that some of my improved swim fitness will enable me to bike and run faster, even though I will be training those sports to not lose any speed and maybe even find some more.

Like I said, I get that people think they will get a better payoff by swimming less and biking and/or running more.  Depending on your swimming background, age and experience in the sport, that may be the best tactic.  For me, I plan to keep on swimming.  If for nothing else than as I get older and possibly become unable to run and/or bike, I hope to be able to swim well into my 80’s.

What say you?