5k deload weeks and taper

Hi everyone -- I'm a beginner who will be swimming his first 5k in ~ 16 weeks.

Two very simple questions, with apologies if those have been answered elsewhere:

  1. My current training plan aims at increasing my swimming volume every week, with a 'deload' week every 3 weeks or so, where I plan to limit my volume to 70% of that of the previous week.

The above is inspired by running training plans, but does that make sense within the context of long-distance swimming, and is the deload percentage reasonable or not?

  1. Should I include a proper taper prior to the race? Right now, I have planned a 'deload' week (see above) the week before the race (so, Week 15), and two very short sessions prior to the race on race week (Week 16).

Same as above -- does that make any sense, or shall I swim a normal training week on Week 15?

Thanks in advance for any help :smile:

P.S. I understand that 5k is a pretty short distance for most readers here, but 5k was more or less my weekly swimming distance not so long ago. I'm currently at 8k, planning to push to 11k towards the end of my training schedule.

Tagged:

Comments

  • musclewhale89musclewhale89 Alberta, CanadaMember

    There are many people on here with far more experience than I do but thought I'd comment.

    It sounds like you have a background in distance running which benefits you in designing your training program. The way you have it will work very well for your first 5K. If you can make it up to 10-12k per week you should be fine. I would incorporate some 2-3k open water swims if your race is in open water. There are a lot of things to practice in open water that you dont get in the pool.

    metricfrogcurly
  • curlycurly Issaquah, WASenior Member

    Your training program seems pretty reasonable and if you are running half marathons, you already are fit. So now you get to learn how to swim a 5K, which is kind of a similar mentality to the HM. My sister is a marathon runner and she swam her first 5K last summer. She was really nervous about it until I broke the swim down like she would break down a run. Once she saw the parallel, she was off to the races.

    I think the only useful advice I could give someone who is swimming their first 5K is to seed yourself in a slow group and swim outside the main pack, whether that is to the side or to the rear. Get comfortable being in a group of swimmers. Get comfortable navigating. And sort of go along for the ride.

    Don't be all nervous about how well you will do. You'll do fine. Make sure your first 5K is a fun, learning experience and then you will be excited to do your next one, and your next one and...

    metricfrogKatieBunrxleakemmarysinger
  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member

    Thanks very much to both of you for your feedback -- and thank you especially for the additional recommendations that you provided.

    I'll stick with progressively increasing my weekly volume through long swims, with a few OW swims that I'll try to make 2-3k+.

    The race I'm looking at can be broken down to 3 x 1500m segments + a final sprint, so that's how I'm visualising it right now.

    … And the advice on swimming outside of the main pack is duly noted!

    curlymusclewhale89
  • IronMikeIronMike Northern VirginiaCharter Member

    5K is a fun distance. Enjoy it!

    I noticed in your intro post that you're considering wetsuit. If you've got access to open water prior to your 5K, try now to get acclimatized to the water temp. It is so much more freeing to swim w/o the suit.

    If not, or if you're sold on using the wetsuit, then you definitely should get into open water with the suit on because it is a totally different experience. Your legs will be quite high (or feel that way) compared to when you're swimming in just trunks. You'll almost feel like you're swimming downhill.

    You also mention your 1500 resulted in 1:53/100, and your goal is to finish the 5K keeping to the 1:53. I think for your first one you should just enjoy the swim. If you try to keep to your 1500-hundred pace you may wear yourself out with 3500 still to go.

    Other suggestions:
    -Drink a lot of liquid prior to the swim. You don't need a kayaker to stop you and feed you on a swim that should last less than 2:00, but you do need liquids.
    -Get comfortable peeing horizontally: thus you need to practice in OW prior. Peeing while horizontal is totally different than vertical. Try to avoid stopping to go vertical just to pee. Any time you stop, your forward momentum stops and you have to build up that flow all over again when done peeing. Keep moving forward!
    -Get in open water and practice navigation. Bad sighting can add as much as 10% to your swim. (Since I'm not the best navigator, I always train as if my swim is 10% more than it really is.)
    -When you lift your head to sight, lift just enough for the eyes to break the surface ("alligator eyes") and up your kick tempo. You're trying to avoid your lower back lifting your head (human heads are heavy) so much that by the time you're done with the swim your lower back feels like you did 1000 deadlifts.

    Good luck and let us know how it goes!

    curlyevmometricfrogwendyv34

    We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams

  • swimmer25kswimmer25k Charter Member

    How much are you training right now?

    As a beginner I wouldn’t rest too much and only do a crash taper the week of the swim. Get to your max weekly yardage and maintain that to the end.

    The taper you’re talking about is akin to what pool sprinters do. You’re not one of them and won’t need much rest.

    I was a 25K+ specialist and often racing for money or spots on a team, so a taper was important for speed. I averaged between 80-100K/week (at least a 10K each workout). Ten days or so out of the swim I’d start off knocking off 1000/down to a minimum of 3000. For my English Channel swim I was in Dover for a week leading up to my swim. I went 2h30m my first day there and dropped 30m each day until the race (I got in for a little every afternoon just to keep loose and acclimate).

    Chris

    IronMike
  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member
    edited February 2023

    @IronMike -- Thank you so much for your detailed reply, this is immensely useful!

    5K is a fun distance. Enjoy it!

    I will, hopefully :smile: In fact, the rest of my replies below will show that I plan to mostly enjoy it, and less race it than initially planned.

    I noticed in your intro post that you're considering wetsuit. If you've got access to open water prior to your 5K, try now to get acclimatized to the water temp. It is so much more freeing to swim w/o the suit.

    If not, or if you're sold on using the wetsuit, then you definitely should get into open water with the suit on because it is a totally different experience. Your legs will be quite high (or feel that way) compared to when you're swimming in just trunks. You'll almost feel like you're swimming downhill.

    I'm unsure whether I'll really need a wetsuit for swimming 5k in the Mediterranean sea by late June early in the morning, and I also know that open water swimmers (not necessarily you!) have something against wetsuits in general.

    However, a friend just told me to Google the name of the race plus a frightening keyword: jellyfish. The race was actually stopped last year due to 80 swimmers getting stung on the way. I'm hoping the wetsuit might bring some useful protection if I find myself in that predicament.

    You also mention your 1500 resulted in 1:53/100, and your goal is to finish the 5K keeping to the 1:53. I think for your first one you should just enjoy the swim. If you try to keep to your 1500-hundred pace you may wear yourself out with 3500 still to go.

    Apologies for being unclear in my introductory post -- 1:53 is my 'cruise' pace, which I can hold over long distances. My 1500 personal best is roughly 10" lower (I never test properly).

    Still, I've revised my initial plans and am now aligned with your advice to just enjoy the race, and not try to pursue a precise time goal. I was initially planning to do so because I was hoping to do some speedwork and improve my pace, but I also run, and having intensity sessions in both sports is too much for me.

    Your other suggestions are all down in my race prep notes, thank you again so much!

    Good luck and let us know how it goes!

    Will do!

  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member

    @swimmer25k said:
    How much are you training right now?

    I'm currently training 8k per week over 3 sessions, which is the maximum training load that I can practically afford to take, due to work and training in other sports (running, first and foremost). I'm planning to increase my swimming mileage only very gradually, to finish at 11k per week. All weeks include long, continuous swims, the longest of which will be 6k.

    As a beginner I wouldn’t rest too much and only do a crash taper the week of the swim. Get to your max weekly yardage and maintain that to the end.

    Thanks a lot -- duly noted.

    Here's my training plan. Columns 1-2-3 are my three sessions, in meters. Column 4 is the weekly mileage, in kilometers. Weeks without a blue background are my 'deload' weeks where I drop 30% of the mileage, but if I understand you well, I should modify the penultimate week to have a much higher mileage of around e.g. 9 to 10k.

    Thanks again for your advice, Chris. I'm sure the stats above are ridiculously low for someone who trains for 25k races, but to me, it's already a huge bump!

  • swimmer25kswimmer25k Charter Member

    Honestly, I think you’d be better served prioritizing your time swimming and doing as much as you can if you have pool time available.

    IronMike
  • curlycurly Issaquah, WASenior Member

    I did a quick look at your training plan. Just my opinion here, but you need to increase your distances for each session. I'd get that yardage (meterage?) up to 4K by the end of March and 5K by the end of April. Then make your 5K workout sort of your "par" and throw in some over 5K workouts when you can. You need a little over distance just to prep you for swimming a 5K. You shouldn't be swimming any less than a 3K workout at this point.

    Right now there are a whole lot of 3K and 2K workouts and you only have one day a week where you are kicking up the distance. If I was to look at your training plan without knowing the goal, I'd figure you were planning on racing a 3K. As swimmer 25K says above, you need to get distance in your workouts and forget about the tapering. The way you have the taper set up actually might hinder you rather than help you.

    Even with only swimming 3 times a week, you can totally do this. Think of it this way. If you add 500 meters to your distance every two weeks, in a month, you have added 1K to your workout. So in two months you can add 2K. Then you have a couple months where you are regularly swimming 5K workouts, with maybe a 6K workout tossed in every now and then when you're feeling frisky.

    Do this and you will enjoy swimming the 5K on race day. If you are generally doing 3K workouts with occasional forays into longer distances, it will be a tough race day. The adrenaline, sun, other racers, wind, waves, navigational errors and your mind will conspire to make 5K seem a lot longer than it was when you were doing your pool workouts. If you're knocking off 5K workouts every other day, it will be a fun day at the beach.

    Little by little... step by step...

    metricfrogIronMike
  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member

    Thanks @curly :smile:

    The 2000m sessions you spotted are my Friday sessions, which are squeezed between two work meetings. Unfortunately, I won't be able to increase their length before mid-April, but after that, I should be able to add some mileage to them.

  • curlycurly Issaquah, WASenior Member

    Ah yes, the conflict of work interfering with life. Unfortunately I have no brilliant solutions for that one.

  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member

    Dear all,

    A quick update -- "complete beginner starts training for a 5k, episode 2."

    I have started implementing some of your advice, especially that of @curly, from which I memorised the last sentence:

    If you're knocking off 5K workouts every other day, it will be a fun day at the beach.

    I gradually increased my longest swims to 4k, and now 5k for the past two weeks. It has been eye-opening -- new sensations during and after the swim, and a clear inability to hold my pace in the last 1.5k.

    Currently working on (1) improving at that long swim, (2) having at least one other 4-5k swim in the week, (3) increasing my stroke rate overall, and (4) scheduling open-water swims.

    Thanks again to everyone who replied to this thread earlier!

    LakeBaggerevmocurlyowsnadine
  • LakeBaggerLakeBagger Central OregonSenior Member

    @metricfrog said:

    I gradually increased my longest swims to 4k, and now 5k for the past two weeks. It has been eye-opening -- new sensations during and after the swim, and a clear inability to hold my pace in the last 1.5k.

    Just commenting to say good job. Especially good that you are paying attention to how your body feels as you adjust. If you notice that your pace decreases toward the end of a swim, or perceived effort increases at the same pace, you know you’re stimulating your body to adapt. So cool!

    Currently working on (1) improving at that long swim, (2) having at least one other 4-5k swim in the week, (3) increasing my stroke rate overall, and (4) scheduling open-water

    Great goals— keep up the good, consistent work :smile:

    metricfrogevmo
  • curlycurly Issaquah, WASenior Member

    @metricfrog said:

    I gradually increased my longest swims to 4k, and now 5k for the past two weeks. It has been eye-opening -- new sensations during and after the swim, and a clear inability to hold my pace in the last 1.5k.

    Currently working on (1) improving at that long swim, (2) having at least one other 4-5k swim in the week, (3) increasing my stroke rate overall, and (4) scheduling open-water swims.

    Thanks again to everyone who replied to this thread earlier!

    Hey, I was just thinking about your training and how you have an inability to hold your pace in the last 1.5k. That's not surprising since you are still climbing the ladder, so to speak. So don't worry, you're doing fine.

    Here's an idea for you to try to help develop the tail end of your swim. In the middle part of your workout, do a nice strong "sprint" set. I put "sprint" in quotes because this shouldn't be an all out set of 50's for example. Certainly no less than 100, but work your way up to doing sets of 200 "sprints". This should be working towards a pretty strong time that you would be happy with. The last one of the set should have you just barely making your target or even falling short by a bit.

    Now that you've done your strong "sprint" set, follow that up with a longer swim. Maybe 800 to 1000. Try to hold pretty strong and steady and consistent the whole way. Certainly not as fast as the sprint, but not dogging it. This will help your body and your mind get used to working the whole distance even after the adrenalin and navigational errors have worn off.

    Hope this helps. Good luck in your workouts.

    evmometricfrogKatieBunowsnadineMtuley
  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member

    Dear all,

    Final update -- I finished my first 5k OW swim this morning, and it went well!

    My official time is 1:46:06. Official race distance was 5.2k, but I went into the race without any navigational training, and must have easily swam 5.4k. I had logged all of my 5k+ swim sessions, and they predicted a race time between 1:45 and 1:50, so I'm pretty stoked.

    Weather conditions were perfect, warm water, close to no wind at all, although we did face mild front currents for roughly 1.5k.

    I cannot say that I trained properly for the race, but I did take the advice in this thread seriously:

    1. I significantly increased my swim distance/time, from roughly 5.5k per week prior to February to roughly 9.8k after that. Each week included a 5k+ session, and I swam my first 6k five days prior to the race (no taper!). I understand that those distances are nothing to most of you, but for a complete beginner like myself, it's a +70% increase from base, and it helped tremendously with mental stamina.
    2. Thanks to Point 1, I went into the race with the right mindset: just-finish (which I knew I could), and enjoy yourself along the way. It went very well from that angle -- I did not panic when I kept getting off-track due to navigational incompetence, and was also lucky that there were no jellyfish, strong wind or other hurdle that could have seriously derailed my race.

    It was an interesting foray into OW swimming for myself, who comes from a running background. Not sure whether I'll sign up for another OW swim race soon, but a positive experience nonetheless!

    Thanks again for your invaluable help. I could have trained and raced much better if I had applied more of it, but no real regrets here, I had to juggle with other things and did my best.

    Kate_AlexanderLakeBaggerMtuleyOpenh2ocurlyKatieBunBillyChambersrxleakem
  • curlycurly Issaquah, WASenior Member

    Great to hear the update. It sounds like a perfect foray into the world of distance swimming. Don't downplay your achievement. You swam a 5K! Tell one of your running friends that you actually swam a 5K and their eyes will bug out. It's hard enough for most people to run a couple miles, swimming a couple miles is beyond most people's comprehension. The overachievers on this site are so far beyond normal that you shouldn't compare yourself to them.

    I'm also really happy that someone came to this site and asked for advice, listened and applied it, and had a very nice result. That isn't always the case, so this is a fun success story.

    KatieBunLakeBaggermetricfrog
  • KatieBunKatieBun CornwallSenior Member

    @metricfrog said:
    Dear all,

    Final update -- I finished my first 5k OW swim this morning, and it went well!

    My official time is 1:46:06. Official race distance was 5.2k, but I went into the race without any navigational training, and must have easily swam 5.4k. I had logged all of my 5k+ swim sessions, and they predicted a race time between 1:45 and 1:50, so I'm pretty stoked.

    Weather conditions were perfect, warm water, close to no wind at all, although we did face mild front currents for roughly 1.5k.

    I cannot say that I trained properly for the race, but I did take the advice in this thread seriously:

    1. I significantly increased my swim distance/time, from roughly 5.5k per week prior to February to roughly 9.8k after that. Each week included a 5k+ session, and I swam my first 6k five days prior to the race (no taper!). I understand that those distances are nothing to most of you, but for a complete beginner like myself, it's a +70% increase from base, and it helped tremendously with mental stamina.
    2. Thanks to Point 1, I went into the race with the right mindset: just-finish (which I knew I could), and enjoy yourself along the way. It went very well from that angle -- I did not panic when I kept getting off-track due to navigational incompetence, and was also lucky that there were no jellyfish, strong wind or other hurdle that could have seriously derailed my race.

    It was an interesting foray into OW swimming for myself, who comes from a running background. Not sure whether I'll sign up for another OW swim race soon, but a positive experience nonetheless!

    Thanks again for your invaluable help. I could have trained and raced much better if I had applied more of it, but no real regrets here, I had to juggle with other things and did my best.

    Many congratulations on completing your swim. So very pleased for you.

    LakeBaggermetricfrog
  • LakeBaggerLakeBagger Central OregonSenior Member

    @metricfrog said:

    1. I significantly increased my swim distance/time, from roughly 5.5k per week prior to February to roughly 9.8k after that. Each week included a 5k+ session, and I swam my first 6k five days prior to the race (no taper!). I understand that those distances are nothing to most of you, but for a complete beginner like myself, it's a +70% increase from base, and it helped tremendously with mental stamina.

    Great job, a 70% increase is a phenomenal improvement for anyone.

    1. Thanks to Point 1, I went into the race with the right mindset: just-finish (which I knew I could), and enjoy yourself along the way. It went very well from that angle -- I did not panic when I kept getting off-track due to navigational incompetence, and was also lucky that there were no jellyfish, strong wind or other hurdle that could have seriously derailed my race.

    I was super happy to read this! Do you think your mental skills from your experiences running transferred over to swimming? It seems like you approached both your training and the race with a strong mental attitude that usually comes from experience. Either way, very cool.

    It was an interesting foray into OW swimming for myself, who comes from a running background. Not sure whether I'll sign up for another OW swim race soon, but a positive experience nonetheless!

    Do another one :)! But I also wonder if having done this swim, if there’s anything you learned from the experience you think you might take back to running? I listen to a lot of running podcasts, but I’m not a runner so I’m always interested in the crossover.

  • metricfrogmetricfrog FranceNew Member

    Thanks for the kudos!

    @LakeBagger said:
    Do you think your mental skills from your experiences running transferred over to swimming?

    Partly so, yes. I have some pre-race routines (nutrition, mental prep, relaxation, mobility etc.) that I use for all races.

    … I also wonder if having done this swim, if there’s anything you learned from the experience you think you might take back to running?

    I'll have to give it some thought after fulling 'digesting' the event. What usually happens is that several friends ask me for a race report, so I get to recall the race and what went well/wrong many times. This has helped me identify several little things in the past.

    The main take-away from that race so far is that I'm benefitting a lot from getting out of my comfort zone. I ran a fairly challenging skyrace earlier this year for the same reason.

    Do another one :)!

    Well, I'm looking at this website right now… They have several distances, from 2.4k to 10k ;)

    LakeBaggercurly
  • LakeBaggerLakeBagger Central OregonSenior Member

    @metricfrog said:

    The main take-away from that race so far is that I'm benefitting a lot from getting out of my comfort zone. I ran a fairly challenging skyrace earlier this year for the same reason.

    This is a really good idea. Doing new things and a variety of things outdoors seems like it would develop a mental toughness that might be different than what you get only doing one thing. Maybe I’ll think of something new to try also :)

    Well, I'm looking at this website right now… They have several distances, from 2.4k to 10k ;)

    I looked up photos of the lake— looks spectacular!! I bet it’s really refreshing in August too!

Sign In or Register to comment.