[Abb94]

I have just started swimming real laps (doing crawl with goggles and swim cap and not the old-lady-breaststroke that I have been doing) and am wondering - how many laps should I be shooting for to eventually be strong enough to do a tri?<br><br>
I swim for about 45 minutes right now, but about half of that is working legs only/arms only with a kickboard and stuff.<br><br>
I mainly swim now as a cross training exercise before my long run days, but I would like to make the most of the workout.<br><br>
Thank you!! I am dumb about swimming!<br><br>
Abbie

 

[theia]

I approach swimming workouts the same way I approach running or biking workouts and make sure I can cover the distance I'll be required to cover on race day.<br><br>
So if the tri you're thinking about has a quarter mile swim, I'd make sure to swim that distance straight through several times before race day. (I'd actually try to swim farther than that, but as a bare minimum I'd be sure to do the actual distance.)

 

[Abb94]

Okay, then I have another stupid question - how many laps would, say, a quarter mile be? The relay triathlon I'm biking for this weekend is a 1K swim, I think. What would that translate to in laps?<br><br>
Sorry to be so dumb.... <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.kickrunners.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="Smile">

 

[mmoonptdeux]

A quarter mile is 440 yd. Assuming you have a 25 yd lengthwise pool (which is pretty standard) you'd cover that (plus 10 additional yards) with a total of 9 laps (a lap being out and back to your starting point.)<br><br>
If it's a 25 m pool, you'd actually need less. You'd need a tiny smidge over 8 laps.<br><br>
Here's a good rough estimate - if you want to translate yds into meters, take your total in yards and multiply it by 0.91. Vice versa (meters into yards), take your total in meters and multiply it by 1.09