Ratio training : single longdistance swim

JacqueJacque M. (Germany)Member
edited September 2014 in General Discussion
Hi all,
I just finished my first real OW-season with two swims over 14 km and 12 km (freshwater, no big currents expected), the last also being my first real crossing (I know that this is nowhere near the distances most of you swim, but everyone has to start somewhere … :) ). I am so glad to have found this forum last year when I was starting to go OW and I’d like to thank everyone for the great advice I found here.
One of my biggest concerns was the question, how much I would have to swim in training to properly prepare for the distances. I basically did, what was recommended here somewhere – I build up my weekly distance to 150% of my longest planned single swim and did some 4-, 3-, and 2-split trainings in the weeks before my first big swim. I have to say it worked perfectly.

I was just doing some statistics to wrap up the season and found, that for my first swim over 14 km I had been swimming 417 km in training, so for every km in the “big swim” I had spent 29.8 km in training. Until the second swim with 12 km (my first crossing later in the season) I had been swimming 441.5 km, so for every km in the crossing I had spent 36.8 km in training. In both swims I was happy to find nearly perfect conditions and after both swims I felt fine – in fact I felt so great, that I could have swum a lot more, I think. It was very comforting to see that I had still lots of reserves left and think it would have been physically possible to swim 18-20 km or to deal with possible head winds or slowing currents. For next year I am already starting to plan for single swims in the range of 20-30 km (someone is completely hooked here… :D ).
So I was just wondering, if maybe I had been training “too much” (I know there is no such thing in OW…) or if I could reduce these ratios for my swims next year. Maybe these ratios can automatically decrease with every season because of the increasing experience? Maybe some of you would like to share your ratios between km in training and the “big swim” you were training for, that could be very interesting.
Thanks!
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