Heather Fell: All sports will have their own individual milestones. Within triathlon,
you've got targets such as doing an Olympic distance in under two and a half hours,
maybe getting under six hours for a half Ironman. If you are really ambitious at the top end of
things, you might be trying to get under 10 hours for a full Ironman. Then you've got the individual
disciplines as well. For a marathon runner to go under a three-hour marker is a big deal.
How about the Ironman swim and breaking 60 minutes, breaking that one-hour barrier? Well,
that's where our focus is today and we're going to be outlining how you can achieve that.
[music] Heather: Let's take a closer
look at what we're actually dealing with here. The distance of an Ironman swim is 3,800 meters,
or for those of you in the US, that is 2.4 miles or roughly 4,200 yards.
If you break it down to look at, say, a 100-meter rep, that would have to be covered in one minute,
34 seconds or if you're dealing with yards, 100 yards would need to be one minute, 26. Obviously,
that is maybe quite doable for just 100 meters, but you need to think about the bigger picture,
because you're going to be having to do 38 of those, so it needs to feel very comfortable.
[music] Heather:
Now, there is no denying that this is quite a demanding challenge and unless you are
a natural swimmer or you swam at a high level, it's going to involve a lot of consistency in
your training and a substantial plan, and also a great deal of swim fitness. If we break it down,
you need to be doing a minimum, really, of three sessions a week,
ideally four if you can stretch to that, and covering a total mileage weekly of around
10 kilometers. Now, if we break it down and look at it in more detail, two of those sessions
need to be looking at working closer to the pace that you plan to be able to swim
your one hour or your Ironman distance in. They will range from around 3,000 to 3,500 meters.
That leaves you with two sessions if you're managing to spread it over four, and those two
sessions are going to be much lighter in volume, just 1,500 to 2,000 meters but really focusing on
drill and technique without, hopefully, tiring you out too much. One advantage of having this
sort of set baseline time to work for means you can build your sessions up quite easily
and know that you're going to be sticking on that target. When it comes to swimming, sadly, it isn't
purely about fitness and miles in the pool, it's about keeping that technique correct as well.
You need to be careful that you don't get too tired from your swimming and your technique starts
to suffer, because they will get ingrained. With that in mind, we're actually going to keep the
reps of each of the bigger sets at a relatively short distance, so starting at around 100 and
maximum up to 400 meters per set. Keeping the 134 per 100-meter base or 126 per 100-yard,
you can really start to dial in getting used to swimming at that pace. As you go longer for the
200, that would be 308 per 200 meters. Given that these main sets are going to
be relatively long in themselves, the warm-up won't need to be too intense or too long either,
just between 300 and 500 meters, but we've got a selection of example sessions to share
with you now. For this first set, there's a total of 3,400 meters but 200 easy swim,
450s pull and then four lots of 25 meters at your target race pace for your warm-up. Then the main
set is two times through six by 100 meters at your target pace turning around on two minutes
followed by 12 times 50 meters at your target race pace again, turning around on one minute.
Once you've completed that, take 200 meters super easy before repeating it once more. Do
the first set as swim and the second set all as pull. Then, just finish off with three lots of
100 meters for your warm-down. Another example for a warm-up, three by 100 meters nice and easy
followed by 450s as 25 meters hard, 25 meters easy. For the main set, it's going to be twice
through again of eight lots of 100 meters at your race pace turning around on two minutes,
eight times 50 meters at target race pace turning around on one minute followed by eight lots of
just 25 meters turning around on 45 seconds, and then take 100 meter easy between the sets.
You've got the options here of doing set one swim and if you want,
you can have pull and paddles for the second set and finish off with a warm-down of 200 meters
easy. Another example here for a total of 3,600 meters, the warm-up a 300 super easy mixing up
swimming and pulling followed by 425s alternating one hard one easy. Then for your main set,
it's three times through of a 200 meters at race pace on a turnaround of four minutes,
six by 100 meters at this target race pace turning around on two minutes followed by 450s
at the same pace turning around on one minute. Take 100 meters nice and easy between each set.
If you want to mix it up, you can do set one as swimming, set two just with a pull buoy,
and set three with pull and paddles, but feel free to do all swim if you prefer, and then a
nice simple, just 100-meter easy warm-down. Try and incorporate two of those key star sessions
each week into your training and you're going to be actually swimming at that race pace,
hopefully. It's going to become starting to get ingrained of what that feels like.
Now, you can mix them up a little bit, but just make sure whatever distance you're doing, you're
still trying to hit that pace. Now, this is an eight-week block, but you want to try and take an
easier week after three weeks. Your fourth week, maybe just do one key session and then another
couple of sessions super easy just so that you're letting all of that training get absorbed. Then
it's time to target another few weeks harder. The end of an eight-week block is a good idea
to do a little test set. This progression session is just going to be testing how you cope with
increasing the distances. We've got three sets of 100 meters turning around on two minutes,
200 meters turning around on four minutes, 300 turning around on six, and then 400 meters
turning around on eight minutes. Then 100 meters easy between sets before repeating it twice more
through. This is not only a slightly longer main set in total volume, but the reps themselves
are becoming increasingly longer and the rest intervals remain constant. It should stretch you,
and in all likelihood, be a little bit too difficult at first attempt, but it will illustrate
just how realistic the goal of a full 3,800 meters at this pace may be in the near future.
[music] Heather: Now, it's quite a
good time to just sit down and have a reflection on that progression test set and see how you got
on. How did you find the longer distances of 300 to 400 meters? Do you think you could have done
more reps at the same distance, or are you even ready to actually progress
the distance of each rep? Well, let's take another four weeks before you do another progression
test, I suppose you could call it. This time, it's going to be a good idea to actually look
at doing a full 3,800 meters as a broken set. By that, we mean basically breaking it down into
chunks, but they will all add up to 3.8K. We've got an example for you here. After your warm-up,
it's four lots of 400 meters with 30 seconds rest, into four lots of 300 meters with 20 seconds rest,
into four lots of 200 meters with 10 seconds rest, into four lots of 50 meters with just
five seconds rest. Take note of your time as soon as you finish the 50-meter interval
and then you take off four minutes 15 seconds, which will give you the total time for your
swimming time of 3,800 meters, and you can see how close to the hour you were.
[music] Heather:
All right. Let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture here. You're trying to break one
hour in the Ironman swim. Realistically, that isn't going to be in the comforts
of a swimming pool. To start with, you're probably, in the majority of Ironman races,
going to be wearing a wetsuit, which is a huge bonus. If you've just done that progression set
and you got back in and tried it with a wetsuit, you would find that you're probably going to go
a lot faster because a wetsuit will add that buoyancy and just make swimming feel
a lot easier. It isn't all pros, I'm afraid, because when you do get to a race, that isn't
going to be a pool. You're going to take out the benefit you get from pushing off a wall,
which almost acts as a momentary rest and just gives yourself a little bit of a reset.
It's going to be open water, whether that's in the sea, whether that's a river or a lake.
With that come a lot of fellow swimmers who are going to be swimming at a similar pace to you,
so it could potentially be getting in your way, you might have currents and waves. It's not going
to be smooth water and you're not going to have the black line down the middle of the pool.
Bear in mind, you might well actually be swimming a little bit further than 3,800 meters as
total. Don't worry, it's not all doom and gloom because you can get the benefit of swimming with
others if you learn to do some drafting. We've made lots of videos on that. If you want to
know a little bit more on how to draft, check those out, but if you do get on the right feet,
you can find yourself actually swimming under an hour easier than you might have expected.
[music] Heather: One
hour for an Ironman swim is a huge achievement or if you've not quite got there yet, it is a huge
target and it'll give you the benefit of having that clear run-through transition and out onto the
bike. Hopefully, that will keep you focused as you follow these tips and you work on your training.
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