synching deload weeks

I have decided to sign up for an open water swimming event in April of next year.  I don't aspire to be very competitive, but nonetheless it's the sort of thing you need to approach with a training plan.  Unfortunately the first two mesocycles are 5 weeks long.  It seems logical to synch my Foundation work to the deload cycles there.

Should I extend each "week" of foundation to be a day or two longer, or add in an extra week repeating week 3/7/11? 

The exact plan is to train twice a day, six days a week, AM M/W/F being Foundation, AM T/Th/Sa being long distance swimming and PM M/T/W/Th/F being swimming technique (short distances and sometimes dryland) with the group.  Inevitably training days will be lost to conflict with work (I train and work in the same place) but hopefully not too much.

synchroGENized said:

Should I extend each "week" of foundation to be a day or two longer, or add in an extra week repeating week 3/7/11? 

That, or you could shorten the swimming cycles by one week.

Can't switch certain dates in the swimming macrocycle - my individual planning has to fit into the real world

Ok, well you'll probably be fine with either.  I've found on some weeks I can't meet the progression standard, so I have to repeat a week anyway.  Other weeks I'm progressing much faster than the schedule, so I'll add in a week from the next microcycle.  I think I did hollow rocks and elbow planks both in about a month, because it was mostly just about willpower and pushing myself harder.  But I'm still stuck on hinge rows and pushups....

What kind of training plan are you following for the swimming?

Swimming plan:

Mon - Fri at night 30min - 1 hr I swim with a competitive group, between 1200m and 3000m depending on the coach's plans and how early I can get there.  The problem there is that I work until right when the session starts, so often I am late, almost never get to do the dry-land etc.  The coach lets me get away with that 'cause I'm a colleague and know how to warm up properly without  hindering anyone in my lane.  The emphasis there is technique and power, they work short distances - 50m, 25, even 15m.  I am no good at the short stuff and lazy about working on my own, so it seems beneficial.  - and they use all the toys, its fun to play with the parachutes and paddles and all that stuff.

Then the serious part is I hope to be doing 5 mesos of 3 days a week long distance swimming in the mornings, building from 3500 m to 5500 m in 500m increments each meso including one or two times each meso a full-distance swim (5600m). 

Plans will be dropped and I will join in every time I hear about an open water swim or an aquathalon (maybe one weekend a month?)

So the 5600m is the full length of the open water swim?  Because open water swimming is much harder than swimming in a pool, I'd try to swim for a good deal further than that.  You don't want to reach your limit to find out you're only halfway there because you've been dragged back by the current.

The full distance is 3000 - 3800m depending on the river that year, but everyone at my level ends up swimming 5000 - 5600m because you have to head up-current for a long while to make it past some of the buoys.  (The competitive open water swimmers can do it almost straight, but I'm not planning on that)

I'm trying to find out what preparatory swims are going to be held in my area, and am including a fair amount of head-out freestyle and days where I wear a  drag suit to try and simulate similar conditions.

I had sort of fallen out of the habit of doing F1, but the two competitive open water coaches that I consulted both grabbed my upper arm and flopped it about saying depreciative things about my muscle mass    it seems that I have chicken-wing arms.  So F1 is a priority in my plan.

Yeah keep up your F1 conditioning.  A lot of the stuff we do has a high crossover to swimming, especially the bodyline stuff.  And being stronger will definitely make you a stronger swimmer.