A great swim workout for triathletes is the “sawtooth” swim ladder shown in the graphic below. It is utilized in the Jan. 25 Dover Y Tri-swim Advanced and Intermediate workouts. I’d like to credit Master’s Coach Kent Hurst at the Dover YMCA for introducing me to this, though I did add the name “sawtooth” for obvious reasons. The workout is great in that it blends varying speeds into a longish, continuously swam workout which promotes bursts of speed, active recovery and overall endurance.

The workout is simple. Start with a 50 at long course pace. If you’re working on Ironman or Half Ironman, you’ll probably know your pace. If not, you should! Beginner swimmers, not so much, but intermediate swimmers working on Sprint and Olympic distances should also be aware of their pace. You should know at what pace you can continuously swim 100 yd intervals, in similar fashion to your mile pace in running. As a reference, a 1:50/100 yd pace is very close to the “average” Ironman swim of 1hour 16 min. This would also be a 38 min Half Ironman swim. You have to decide what this pace should be!

After the 50 at long race pace, swim a 50 at fast pace, with no rest between. There needs to be a significant difference in effort between these two levels of effort. After the 50 fast, move to a 100 at long course pace, then back to another 50 fast, then to a 150 long course pace, and so on. It won’t take you long to settle into a rythm of what you can sustain. When you move from the 50 fast to the long course pace, the first 25 will be active recovery and then hopefully you will increase your speed somewhat.

This workout simulates the long course race in that there are always bursts when you want to move away from someone who is kicking you, or you want to accelerate around a buoy. Its a difficult workout, but fun in my opinion, in that it adds variety and a different methodology than intervals for integrating speed into overall endurance training.