Jason
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Posts: 15
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« on: August 26, 2009, 01:58:10 pm » |
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Hey everyone, I was hurt this past spring and I took up swimming in order to maintain my fitness. Before the injury I was putting in around 75-85 mpw, doing 2-3 doubles and one longer run 15-18. Since the injury I am a little catious about pushing my miles past 70 each week. Now I am doing the swimming 2-3 times a week on the days that I used to do my doubles. Although there is no science in comparing the two workouts, I usually count 1 mile swimming as a 4 mile run. From what I have read on the topic, this seems to be a general comparison made, plus the 1 mile swimming is much tougher for me than even my longer runs to begin with. I was wondering, for those who do other x-training during the week, do you think it makes sense for me to count those miles in the pool towards my weekly training? Basically by swimming 3 miles a week, I am getting in 12 miles total on top of my running, minus the pounding.
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Tamy
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Posts: 21
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« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2009, 02:10:01 pm » |
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I've never counted my swim miles toward my running miles. I swim on my one day a week off from running, and I don't give myself any credit for that day.
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Scott Zincone
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« Reply #2 on: August 26, 2009, 11:16:07 pm » |
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The template for my blog has a cross training section. That is where I add my swimming, cycling, and pool running miles. But if your try to change to that template be careful. Sometimes it will delete all of your blog entries. Luckily Sasha can get them back for you. Maybe you should ask him to change it for you or for his advice on how to do it properly.
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Michelle Lowry
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« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2009, 08:14:25 am » |
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My template doesn't have a cross training counter, so I put my crosstraining miles as my easy miles. How long does it take you to swim your mile vs run 4 miles. I think cross training miles should take 1.3-1.5 as much time as running easy does.
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Jason
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Posts: 15
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« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2009, 02:43:47 pm » |
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Swimming a mile usually will take me around 35 minutes or so while an easy run would be around 28 minutes, so I guess that they are pretty much equal. Also, the swimming leaves me feeling much more taxed while the run feels like nothing.
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Sasha Pachev
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« Reply #5 on: August 27, 2009, 04:13:48 pm » |
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The problem is that while it may leave you more taxed, it does not have the same training effect for the purposes of running. Running can be replaced maybe at 80% level by cross-country skiing, maybe 70% by the elliptical trainer, somewhere around 50% by cycling if you do it hard enough, and only maybe 20% by swimming. Those numbers are meaningful only in the context of comparison, of course, not necessarily the exact numeric expression of the training effect.
Some more food for thought. A good cross-country skier is almost without exception also a very good runner. A good runner is at least decent in cross-country skiing, but not necessarily great. If I were picking a team for running/cross-country skiing duathlon, I would take exceptional cross-country skiers and would not even look at the runners. A good biker is a decent runner, although not great. A good runner is a decent biker, again usually not great. However, a great swimmer is often a terrible runner, and a great runner is often a terrible swimmer! For a reason - running and swimming do not correlate that much, in fact, perhaps they pull you in different directions.
If I were to swim I would not count the mileage at all so as not to trick myself into thinking that I can be a better runner by swimming more. Think of it as a nice muscle relaxing activity similar to massage.
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Scott Zincone
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« Reply #6 on: August 27, 2009, 07:01:07 pm » |
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Why not count the mileage as crosstraining ? What should we be putting in that spot ?
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Michelle Lowry
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« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2009, 08:58:35 pm » |
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Scott - not all of our blogs have a crosstraining spot (mine doesn't). If it does, then for sure that'w where it should go.
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Scott Zincone
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« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2009, 09:54:55 pm » |
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You had to choose it when you originally signed up for the blog. I did not have it at first. And when I did make the change it screwed everything up and all my previous entries went away. Thankfully Sasha fixed it for me.  |
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Jason
Lurker
Posts: 15
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« Reply #9 on: August 30, 2009, 08:26:31 pm » |
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I understand that swimming is probably the least correlated to running, but I just thought that since I am breathing hard the whole time, it would be a workout for my lungs and core, teaching my body to use oxygen more efficiently.
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Sasha Pachev
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« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2009, 02:14:20 pm » |
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It appears that the ability of the body to use the oxygen efficiently is very much sport-specific. Possibly because it is localized to the muscle. So if the leg muscles are good at using oxygen, the arm muscles at the same time could be terrible at the same task. Also, since the brain is involved, there is something about the specificity of the movement. The muscle might partially lose its ability to use oxygen when used in a way that is different from which it was trained.
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Dave Holt
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« Reply #11 on: August 31, 2009, 02:54:57 pm » |
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All I know is that I jumped in the lap pool after my 7 year old (at the time) had just swam over 2 miles (1 hour straight swimming) thinking I could get a little in... 2 laps later, I was dead, sucking wind like I had never gotten off the couch!
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Scott Zincone
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« Reply #12 on: August 31, 2009, 04:09:19 pm » |
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That last post was funny.
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