I'm getting ready to do a 1500m swim for a tri relay at the end of April. Does anyone have a good training program for 1500m that they'd be willing to share?

TIA

Assuming it is an Open Water swim you want to get in as much pool time as you can.

You can find plenty of workouts online but things I work on when I have had an open water swim in my future-

1. Head out of the water drill
Doing 25s with head completely out of water and making effort to kick enough so body stays horizontal
2. Long sets with no push offs
When turning around you dont get to push off and basically start the next lap practically stopped
3. Wet suit practice
I have never worn one but can only imagine getting use to it with your shoulders

hth

What is your swim background and how competitive do you want to be?

quote:

---

1. Head out of the water drill
Doing 25s with head completely out of water and making effort to kick enough so body stays horizontal

---

if you're an absolute newbie to swimming in general, you may very realistically swim for 25 yards with your head out of water.. that being said, i wouldn't spend precious pool time practicing that. youtube some open water sighting drill videos.. where you look up every certain # of strokes instead of swimming with your head out of water for 25 yards at a time.

When I first started triathlon it seems I heard a lot about sighting and I thought it was going to be something you had to work at. Now after doing an Olympic and a Half Ironman I can say that I don't really understand how anybody spends anytime focused on sighting. Most any race has pretty huge bouys that are hard to miss, and if you are a middle of the packer like me there are plenty people around to keep you going in the direction at all times.

For me the big difference is form. I got to the point where I was swimming 1000m in the form of 10 x 100. Then I watched a couple form videos online and literally two workouts later I swam 1600m non stop with ease.

So I would say visit a couple sites like www.swimsmooth.com or www.youtube.com/tiswim and find what works for you. There is no perfect form for everyone, each person is different. For me I follow the Total Immersion style more than anything else because I hate kicking. I have never been a strong kicker and TI focuses more on the kick simply being about rotating the body than it is about floatation or propulsion. So it works perfectly for me. That style of stroke feel effortless and easy to me.

I would spend a good week focusing on form and finding what works good for you.

quote:

---

What is your swim background and how competitive do you want to be?

---

This. Tell us how good of a swimmer you are now. What kind of swimming facilities do you have access to? How often can you get in the water before your race?

I appreciate the responses from everyone. I would consider myself a pretty good swimmer. I've done one open water sprint triathlon, but nothing competitively beyond that, and I've never had any sort of coaching. I have access to a 25m laned pool and can get over there any day, but I'll have limited access to open water, especially this time of year. I'm just looking for a plan to make sure I'm conditioned to maintain a consistent pace over the 1500m. I realize it's not terribly far, but it'll be the longest I've gone in open water. Thanks again for the help.

swimming is different from running and even biking in that you can increase volume, frequency or intensity faster.

for 1500m, you probably want 6-12 weeks of training time, swimming 4-6 times per week, starting around 300-500m working up to 2000-2500m per workout during the penultimate week.

keep it varied, search the internet for training programs, technique. watch youtube for some pointers. that's a cheap way to do it without a coach or training partner/group.

Not sure I agree with Augustus that you need 4-6 swims/week to get ready. I agree starting now is a good thing.

I have a few broad recommendations to make for starters:

- do not ever lose your focus on proper stroke technique; improving efficiency will improve your speed and reduce your effort more than simply trying harder
- use intervals instead of straight long swims for the bulk of your training; multiples of shorter swims allows you to keep your stroke intact longer and allows you to swim faster
- 8 weeks from your race I'd go for a race distance swim once every two weeks. You want to have confidence that you are ready for 1500M.
- open water is different than pool swimming of course. The water is rougher, you are swimming in a crowd, you have to sight, etc. So you need to do some open water work before the race.
- a reasonable makeup for a workout is:

25% of time in warmup
50% of time in aerobic training
25% of time mixed in for drills and warmdown

I suggest you check out the site www.swimsmooth.com which is focused on triathletes and distance swimming.

Are there any negative consequences to being in a chlorinated pool 5x a week?

Anybody have any other type of health consequence related to pool chlorine?

Hair is dry as can be but other than that not really. Spent 3000-5000y a week in pulls for 3-4 days for years