More Swimming Tips for Runners!

If you are going to be at the pool a good bit, equipment is worth the investment and gives you so many more options for what you can do in the water! I recommend a mesh equipment bag for the “wet gear” (kickboard, fins, pull buoy, paddles) and a separate more solid bag for cap, goggles, towel, and any change of clothes (or a spare suit).

This blog is basically a way for readers to more easily find my “swimming tips for runners” which I posted over Instagram through the summer of 2020! Here, I recapitulate those tips, expand upon them, and offer a few more suggestions for how to incorporate swimming into your run training. By the way, you will also find an earlier blog post on the same topic HERE too. (The previous blog post includes a section on aqua jogging and aqua jogging form, so if you are most interested in that rather than straight up swimming, refer to that one first!)

Without further ado, here are two sections of swim tips for runners: the first is for beginners looking to get started who may not have any swim background at all, and the second is for those with some swim background (you were at least on a swim team in high school, for example).

BEGINNER SWIM TIPS: (expanded from this post linked here!)

Storytime: once upon a time, when I was younger, I was not good at sports at all to the shock of my very athletic parents (my dad played baseball at Harvard, my mom was a scholarship gymnast at WVU back when women almost never got athletic scholarships, GO MOM!). I have vivid memories of my dad trying to throw a football at me in the park: "keep your eyes OPEN, Ann Margaret!" (😂) I was scared of Duck, Duck, Goose because I always ended up in the "stew pot" and was nearly always picked dead last in gym class, where I was frequently given a C by the teacher. You get the idea.

Enter swimming, my first sport. When I was 11, my mom thankfully listened when I begged her to get me extra swim lessons. This started a lifelong love for the pool. In addition to yoga, swimming has been invaluable to me as a crosstraining tool for my running. I would not have qualified for the Olympic Trials Marathon without all of my swimming!

I know most runners don't have a swim background like I do, so here are my tips for GETTING STARTED:

1️⃣ Technique matters! If you have never had formal swim training (or even if you have!), nothing will beat the aid of a good eye to help you fix your form. Find a coach or master's team where someone can watch you in person to correct your stroke. Be patient with yourself here.
2️⃣ Take your time to learn all 4 of the strokes. This also makes practice more interesting!
3️⃣ Do not just swim without stopping. This is where a team environment can be helpful, as you learn the structure of a swim practice and what that entails. A swim workout consists of sets of different distances on specific time intervals.
4️⃣ Get equipment: goggles, cap, kickboard, pull buoy, paddles, & fins are your basic essentials. These may be available at your pool (but if not I recommend @arenausa!). You can get by with just goggles and cap to start, but the extra gear allows you to focus on just your kick, just your pull, etc.
5️⃣ Start small: even a 20 min. swim a couple times per week will really add up over time.

I think it is important to additionally note here that—especially for beginners!!—even a little bit in the pool can go a long way. Try subbing in a short pool swim for your days that you double for running, and you may find you recover a heck of a lot faster.

Don’t forget to stretch after you swim! Especially with long course, I find I need to do extra hamstring stretching (the extra flipturns of short course keep me a little looser in that regard!).

MORE ADVANCED SWIM TIPS: (expanded from this post here)

An aside: my “favorite” part of this original Instagram post was the man who commented that he thought I had done 3000m for the entire week and that my 30k m for the week thus far was a typo, ha! Nah dude, 3k m is a warmup!

An additional aside: don’t let the above scare you! I just really really really really love to swim, and you definitely don’t need to do that much to help your run fitness! (In fact, I would actually recommend that you don’t do as much as I do in the pool — I really have built up to that over years and I honestly just love big swims. I have concluded that I just the equivalent of an ultra-runner when it comes to the pool—but not to running, haha!)

Here are some tips for those with a swim background looking to add more of this form of crosstraining to their repertoire:

1️⃣ Company is key! Friends make friends go faster and have more fun! (This is if you really want to push yourself, but obviously you don’t need to go 110% every time you hit the water!)
2️⃣ Depending upon your goal for the swim, know what your workout will be. For a chill recovery swim or low intensity distance swim, you might just make things up as you go. For a "workout workout," have a plan. I write my workouts in advance and keep them in a clear sealed bag at the end of my lane for reference and then adjust (like you would for running!) as needed.
3️⃣ I said this in the first post, but it bears repeating: don’t just continuously swim! Do a workout that lets you vary distances, focusing on just kicking, changing speeds, etc.!

SUGGESTED SWIM SETS if you are training alone (don't do these in a row—these are *examples* of sets that you might do WITHIN a workout, and are ones that I find especially helpful if I am swimming by myself):

1️⃣ 10 x 150 (50k with a board, 100FR) on an interval that gives you anywhere from :05-:15 rest
2️⃣ repeat sets of 3 x 50 pace (75% effort, like you are doing a tempo), then 1 x 50 easy on an interval that gives you :05-:10 rest for hard 50s, different slower interval with the same rest for the recovery 50
3️⃣ 500 as a ladder (25k/25sw/50k/50sw/75k/75sw/100k/100sw): note you can replace the kick with BK, etc.
4️⃣ 1000 "SKIPS" (200 each of swim, kick, IM, pull, swim)—good warmup set!
5️⃣ pull using a breathing pattern by 100s (every 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 strokes, etc.—also a good way to count 100s!)
6️⃣ 2-3X:{200FR fast, 50ez, 100FR faster than 200, 50ez, 50FR fastest, 50 ez plus extra 1:00 after full round), all on intervals appropriate for you!

I literally never do track workouts—just swim workouts because I think they are way more fun! Find workouts that are fun for you and you will always do them (because duh, having fun!) and getting fitter/faster will be a bonus that just comes along with it!!!

IN SUM: do the workouts you enjoy and love and that make YOU happy. They will make you a better, stronger, less injured runner over time.