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Night Train Swimmers train in open water
In How six San Francisco swimmers will conquer the Sea of Cortez part II, we described the strategy for this swim. How will Night Train Swimmers train for this world record attempt?
We recently spoke with Night Train swimmer, Vito Bialla, a veteran of many ultra endurance events. "We swim four or five days a week and work on a training program that has a ladder. In other words, say you have a 90 day training program. Week one, you do ten miles. The second week you add five percent to ten miles. In the third week you would add five percent to that and in the fourth week you would drop back to the first week level but add five percent to that. So it's like a ladder. That's the professional triathlete's training program, it's universal and it's pretty easy. So when we're in a level three workout which is the intense workout before we back off for a recovery week, we're swimming pretty hard. We're swimming two to four hours and hammering."
How do the swimmers monitor the intensity of the workout? "Matt Davie is North America champion in the freestyle 200 and 400, he's Olympic caliber. We have other swimmers who are right behind him. So we benchmark off those guys and continually push each other. From my perspective you have to learn how to slow down and back off because you have to learn how to swim, slow and fast and efficient at the same time without going overboard. Sprinting is one thing. You can sprint for one hour and then go and take a nap for eight. But that won't work for this Sea of Cortez swim. Because you have to get up in four hours and then get ready to go back in again and do another hour. I've done a lot of long-distance stuff and you learn how to pace yourself. And that's key. You start off slow, the body learns to burn fat and once you are burning fat instead of glycogen (which you burn when you are sprinting) then your body goes into a zone and that's the beauty of long distance stuff. But these guys will figure that out."
Stay tuned for more on Vito Bialla and Night Train Swimmers...
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