Aqua-jogging and equivalent mileage

In my experience one length of an olympic length pool is one lap around the track. No science involved, just feel.

You have to consider whether this was done in freshwater, saltwater, wake, no wake.

Extremely accurate conversions for land-running time:

*Freshwater/no wake: x2.85

*Freshwater/wake: x2.41

*Saltwater/no wake: x2.63

*Saltwater/wake: x2.12

For example, I often do a lot of 2.5 hr ocean jogging sessions in wavey areas. On land, it's worth about 1.17924528 hrs of running.

It's like comparing apples and oranges. Just spend the same time in the water that you'd normally spend running, accept that your HR will be 10-15 BPM lower than equivalent running, and do lots of interval workouts. If you are able to do a long walk once a week, do it, as this will help you transition back to land running once your shin heals. Just don't walk until you can do this pain free.

Look up Pfitzinger's deep water running schedule for ideas. You will definitely maintain your fitness.

It highly depends on your effort level. I always try to count my steps/minute (count one leg), but you have to have good form. The back leg should go straight and the upper lead leg should be about 80 degrees from parallel the bottom of the pool. I figure that about 65 strides per minute with good form is about same benefit as a normal daily run.

In terms of time equivalency, I always estimated that time aqua jogging is about 60% of running. So if you usually run 10 miles in a hour, I would estimate that aqua jogging for an hour would be about the same as 6 miles in an hour.

I am interested in other people's experience and opinions.

I agree about Pfitzinger. Here are some helpful websites.

http://kemibe.com/distancecoach/labreports/water.shtml

http://kemibe.com/distancecoach/labreports/9wkH2O.htm

https://www.aquajogger.com/water-running-handbook/

There's not really a correct answer to this question. First and foremost, you only provided a length of time and there's no way for us to know your effort level. Imagine if you asked the same question but replaced aqua jogging with running. 1 hour of running could mean a lot of different things in terms of mileage depending on your effort level and your ability.

Second, this type of question has always seemed silly to me. What benefit do you actually get out of having some obscure conversion of an aerobic activity to a corresponding mileage in terms of running? If you're injured, your goals should be 1. get healthy again and 2. try to maintain fitness as best you can. Typically in order for me to maintain some decent level of fitness through cross-training, I have to do about 1.5x the amount of time doing aerobic work that I would have normally spent running. In college, that meant doing about 1:45 every day to try to maintain about 75 mpw. At minimum, you should try to do the equivalent amount of time that you would normally run or you'll probably hemorrhage your fitness.

But aside from the effort the maintain fitness, is there an actual benefit to knowing that your 60 minute aqua-jogging session is worth exactly 6.43 miles?

I probably worded the original post a little poorly. I really am trying to get an answer for what you are describing - how much aquajogging to maintain fitness. I obviously don't care about the exact mileage equivalence... more a general question about how to structure it and how long to do it for.

Thanks to everyone who gave their thoughts.

No point to do any conversions. And with shin pain, truth is there is probably a better cross-training option for that injury. Most important, stop calling it aqua jogging.

Water running is much tougher than land provided you take the workout seriously and are doing anything close to a real running stride.

Ignore all handbooks as relatively few coaches have any clue. If you were pretty fit before the injury, you really want to think of pool running as a hybrid between strength and conditioning work.

Similar to the way you might think of stairs, sled, or hill work, whether walking or running.