I got to thinking about the 2012 Go the Distance event I signed up for at the beginning of the year. I mentioned it a while back. Since January I’ve been keeping track of my progress and most recently I’ve tweaked my goal a little bit. I was thinking about a way to visualize my progress beyond what I could see in a spreadsheet or a chart. That got me thinking about how far 500 kilometers really is. I started looking at maps, and it turns out the length of Lake Michigan is pretty close to that same distance.
A bit of research here and there and I found the course map for the Chicago Yacht Club’s Race to Mackinac. It is the oldest annual freshwater distance sailboat race in the world. 536 kilometers (333 statute miles, 289.4 nautical miles) from Chicago, starting just off Navy Pier, to Mackinac Island, Michigan. After I read that, I had my goal. I could swim to Mackinac. Not all at once, mind you, but over the course of a year, I could make it. Follow along.
At the end of each month, I am adding a checkpoint along the route. I am also marking when I hit certain recognized milestone achievements. My ultimate goal is to reach Mackinac Island by the end of the year.
If you’d like something a little more immediate, the ILMSA State Meet is next weekend: April 19-22. It will be held at the UIC Flames Natatorium in the Physical Education Building at UIC. This is the same location where I swim with my team. I’m excited to see how I do. Thursday and Friday are in the evening only: 1000 Free; I’m not attempting that this time around. I am swimming two individual events on Saturday:
- Event 14: 200 Free
- Event 18: 100 Breast
It’s highly likely my coach will place me in a relay as well, either the 200 Medley or the 200 Free. I toyed with the idea of swimming the 500 Free on Sunday, but by the time I got around to registering for the meet the 500 Free was already closed. Cheer my teammates and me on if you like. Should be quite a show with some very fast swimmers entered into the meet.
Beta|Erinyes 
I will be following closely this weekend and cheering from Pueblo, CO.
About where are you now in your Race to Mackinac? Can you pinpoint your present location on the map?
I’ll add a pin at the end of every month and at key accomplishments. I’m quickly approaching the 100 mile mark. I should hit that on Tuesday, so stay tuned!
In high school the season was aproximately 15 weeks long (if memory serves). I reckon that we averaged about 4000 yards in morning sessions and about 7500 yards in afternoon workouts. That’s 12k in morning workouts and 37.5k in the afternoon each week. Round that to 50k per week and subtract one week of missed workouts for afternoon meets, and we are looking at 700k yards per season, or about 400 miles. That ought to put it in some perspective.
Go get ’em!
Thanks, John!
When I started up with CBD last year I tried to remember what Haley’s workouts really were. Looks like I underestimated by a little bit. My best guess was: three days a week in the morning (6:30-7:30 am) for an hour at somewhere between 2500-3500 yards, five days a week in the evenings for two and a half hours (3:05-5:30 pm) at 6000-7000 yards. Those estimates yielded a weekly total somewhere around 40-50k a week, closer to 35-40k on weeks we had meets.
Then I started trying to remember what those workouts consisted of and I couldn’t remember. You wouldn’t happen to have any record of any of those workouts would you?
Perhaps you are right. The big volume yardage was probably only in that January period when we returned from Christmas break, up until we started backing off on yardage in February.
I wish I had kept records of our workouts, but I think this would have been a typical afternoon sessions:
warmup: 200 pull, 100 kick, 200 swim (500 yds, 10 mins)
initial set: 8 x 150, maybe some stroke drill (1200 yds, 20 mins)
200 kick (200 yds, 5 mins)
time trials: 100 trial & 200 trial (300 yds, 20 mins)
main set: 20 x 100 free (2000 yds, 30 mins)
ladder set: 50-100-150-200-200-150-100-50 (1000 yds, 16 mins)
IM set: 10 x 100 IM (1000 yds, 18 mins)
final set: 5 x 200 Free-IM alternating (1000 yards, 18 mins)
warm-down: 300 kick (300 yards, 6 mins)
That adds up to 7500 yards and about 2 hrs and 25 minutes. At the beginning of the season we would probably start at 6000+ yards and work our way up to this level, then by mid-February we would start tapering back down to about 6000 yards.
I’m guessing we did at least 4000 yards in our 80 minute morning workouts. I swim 3600 yards in about 70 minutes in my old age, so we must have done much more back when we were teenagers. Remember doing the timed 2000 swim at 6:15 am? Good tims.
And remember, morning practice was 6:10 to 7:30 (80 mins) and afternoon practice was 2.5 hours (2:30 to 5:00 back when school let out at 2:10; then 2:50 to 5:20 when school release was pushed back to 2:30).
Looking at your sample afternoon workout, I think you nailed it. I had forgotten about the changes in the afternoon dismissal times and the length of that morning practice. I mostly remember eating anything and everything I could find through first period. And then doing the same when I got home in the evenings.
In contrast, now I’m swimming five days a week: two days with the team for 90 minutes (my lane averages about 3800 yards) and three days on my own: two lunch hours for 40 minutes (1800 yards) and once on Saturday mornings for an hour (2300 yards). So, 13500 a week is typical.
It’s a far cry from before, but I feel good doing it.
As you should.
13k+ per week is pretty damn stellar. I go three times per week (if I am lucky) so I am right at about 11k per week. I can’t really go back-to-back days anymore because my shoulder hurts too much, so I usually take a day off in between. The exception is if I go to an early-morning workout on a Monday, for example, and then hit an evening workout on a Tuesday. I can get by if I have about 36 hours to rest my shoulder.
And good for you for joining a master’s team. I have my master’s card, but the local team swims at 5:30 am and I just can’t get myself out of bed that early.
Can you imagine trying to do 50k in a week at our age? I wouldn’t make it to the second day.
Hey, I didn’t know you were swimming with any regularity. That’s very cool. I am sorry to hear about the shoulder, though. Does swimming help it any, or is it more of an aggravation?
There are some (very fast) members of my team that are putting in the 40-50k weeks, I’m sure. Just not me. Most (probably 70-80%) of my team are triathletes. So the current “encouragement” is for me to come do open water swimming with them in Lake Michigan.
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