Swimming

when your face is in the water, hum. it forces you to breathe out your nose which will get rid of the lack of air feeling. at least it worked for me.

First, just a question out of curiosity: are you aiming to be a Volusia County Lifeguard?

But as far as breaking 10 minutes for a five hundred, here are a few tips:

1. Pure mileage, well "meterage" will help you improve.

2. Breathing. Obviously if you're on this forum, you're a runner or at least semi-understand what it takes to be a runner. What you're probably used to is fluid, natural breathing. Exhale, then almost immediately inhale.

Swimming is similar but not enough. The trick to breathing for swimming is to take a breath every third stroke (so that you'll be breathing on each side, i.e. bilateral breathing). Sometimes it can be too much coordination to handle if you've never swam, so it's easier to breath on the same side each time--EVERY OTHER BREATH. Start there and work up. And when you breath, don't gulp like it's your last living breath. Make it natural, and exhale while your head is underwater to save time while you turn to take a breath out of the water. The only thing different than running is adjusting to the brief lack of oxygen.

3. You can do build sets as well to increase your resistance. Assuming you're in a 25m pool, start with a warm up then do a 100, 30s break, 200, 30s break, 300 etc. Or you can always decrease or increase the intervals.

4. Hypoxic sets. You can increase your aerobic capacity by doing a series of say 10x25m lengths. For half of that drill, don't breathe (12.5m).

And on a last note, if you're getting out of breath after 2 laps, cool it down. Don't swim so fast. You'll be able to build up to 500 if you don't wear yourself down so quickly.

If you have any other questions, post back. I've grown up a swimmer. I can't run for the life of me, but my running-nut boyfriend saw this and asked me to answer.

Do flip turns.

The reason you feel out of breath is because you are not COMPLETELY exhaling. Its a build up of CO2, very common problem. Also, make sure you completely finish exhaling underwater, you don't have time to finish exhaling and inhale while your head is turned.

Interval training is the key to swimming!

Two more suggestions:

1. Slow down. If you start fast and are working anaerobically early on, you have a hard time dropping back to aerobic swimming. I always have a hard time recovering once I get that out of breath anaerobic feeling during a longer swim (such as repeat 400s or 500s).

2. Get some coaching or instruction. Just a session or two with a swim coach to work on some technique will do wonders if you don't have a swimming background. Unlike running, swimming is very technique oriented, and just swimming more will ingrain the bad habits and poor form. There are tons of coaches out there who work with triathletes who don't come from a swimming background, and you can probably find one or more who will work with you a few times.

I say this as someone who started triathlons at age 29 being able to swim well enough to pass a lifeguard test, but being decidedly mediocre in the swim leg. After a year of swim training on my own I was a little better than mediocre, and 6 weeks of once a week swimming with a coach made a huge difference.