Doubles & back-to-backs?

Hi! Wanted to ask if some of you swim twice a day? And how to you split it? What about back-to-back long swims during the weekend? Has anyone found them useful?

I swim every morning, but I’m looking for ways to increase my ”time in water”.

Let me know what you think!

miklcct

Comments

  • phodgeszohophodgeszoho UKSenior Member

    EC training in Dover under Freda Streeter and now Emma France have advocated building up through the season to swim back to back 7 and 6 hour swims.

    Very good preparations for long swims.

    nooravalkonenKatieBun
  • wendyv34wendyv34 Vashon, WASenior Member

    I've done long back to back swims on the weekends for the last several years, while training for multi-day events like SCAR and Kingdom Week. I work at a pool and usually only have an hour to swim on my break there, so it's been necessary to swim long on weekends. Lots of folks do twice a day, I found it easier to divide it as the longer swim first and the shorter one later. Right now I'm going about 2.5 hours per day on the weekends and will work up to 3.5-4. I practice swimming efficiently, with good form, focusing on driving from my core, when I'm tired. One will definitely feel tired at some point when swimming long multi-day events.

    nooravalkonenLakeBaggerStLucia_Channel

    It's always a bad hair day when you work at a pool.

  • flystormsflystorms Memphis, TNSenior Member

    When I have trained for some longer swims, I'd do 2x/week with double swims - one in the morning with the team for 90mins speed work (or whatever the coach gave us), then in the evening, I'd get back in for another hour or so, mostly just keeping stretched and holding a pace for long sets. Then I'd also do a long swim on Saturdays as well.

    miklcctStLucia_ChannelIronMike
  • MoCoMoCo Worcester, MASenior Member

    I added in some doubles in my build up to Swim the Suck. It's excellent practice in swimming tired (and since my body was fatigued but my brain wasn't especially cloudy, it was easier to really think about form).

    My coach also rather evilly prescribed some very hard pool work followed pretty quickly by some long open water time (on a weekend day - no way would my schedule allow that during the week). I was not a huge fan at the time, but I executed very well at StS so I guess it all worked. If nothing else it was a useful courage reference*.

    *h/t to Lillian Bustle's ted talk - "doing something brave and keeping that feeling in your pocket for times when you're not feeling so brave anymore"

    KatieBunnooravalkonenflystormsSolo
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