Thursday, May 10, 2007

The "real reason" why Manaudou left for Italy

Manaudou gave an interview to an Italian newspaper. Suddeny it is not about love; (Yeah right), and now it's about workout intensity:
  • "...La Stampa quoted Manaudou as saying the training sessions had become too much for her.
  • "Physically I could not take Lucas' training sessions anymore. I was about to explode," the Frenchwoman told the Italian newspaper.

  • Manaudou, who is the reigning Olympic champion over 400m freestyle as well as world record holder in both the 200m and 400m freestyle, would swim between 15km and 17km a day under Lucas regime. ..." [Link]
Swimming that far each day is the aerobic equal to running a marathon every single day? I suspect that the heart can only get so strong and then swimming becomes superfluous and produces negative attitudes. I heard that Janet Evans "only" swam 10k a day.

1 comment:

Scott said...

That's waaay too much. Runners hotly debate the merits of training 160+ klicks per week (100 miles), with serious questions concerning whether it's possible over an extended period of time or worthwhile given the exceptionally high risk of injury at that level of training. And Manaudou is swimming well over 100 kilometers a week! I swam during the era of high mileage and today's approach of technique over brute force has resulted in far better swimmers. I'd like to hear from the coaching fraternity whether there's any merit to such a punishing training schedule.