Originally Posted by
GMoser85
8 mile run was just a run. I have done a 20 mile ride run 6 and keep a 10 min pace, I'm in the Seattle area so nothing is flat. I want to get my Olympic under 3 hours. Yes pool is hard to really use for training. It's not the same and anytime I do open water, I'm sucking water but no issues in the pool. I think part of my swim is mental.
I just did a sprint in Long Beach a couple weeks back. I've spent a lot of time (relatively speaking) in the pool this summer and it absolutely paid off. It was just a sprint, but my swim time was under 19 minutes. That translates to just about 2 minutes per 100 meters. Prior to putting that much time in the pool, my times were much closer to, if not more than, 3 minutes per hundred meters. I will say I absolutely felt it when I got out though.
But when I train in the pool I'm focusing very specifically on my stroke. I don't swim multiple consecutive laps, but I do it that way intentionally. I swim one lap, there and back, 50 meters, rest and stretch before the next lap. Again, I'm very specific about that because my goal is not simply improve just my endurance but muscle memory so that even as I tire, I still have the same stroke.
There's a triathlon in Santa Barbara at the end of the month. I haven't committed to it yet, but I'm strongly considering it. This is longer than a traditional Olympic, and it would be the longest triathlon I've done to date. It's longer than an Olympic but shorter than a half Ironman, I'm calling it a 1/4 Ironman.