I have decided: not much. It turns out when it’s up to me the first thing that gets cut in the training schedule is swimming. It’s not that I hate swimming. It’s fine. I just hate finding out which pool is open, going to the pool, standing on the deck in the cold — because all pools here are outdoors, jumping in the water and waiting to warm up, sometimes never warming up, staring at the black line over and over, dealing with silly Masters people or dealing with silly public open swim people, getting out and running back inside. It’s easier not to.
So, I have decided that while I am training for CIM I do not need to swim much. I figure as long as I swim 1-2x/week then I won’t forget how, right? After CIM, I’ll go back to 4-5x/week. This sounds like a brilliant plan, particularly since it means NOT swimming right now.
I mean, really, I’m going to swim a 1:0x for IM CDA, pretty much no matter what, right? And, I’m definitely not going to put in the crazy hours between now and June that it’d take to jump up a level in swimming and suddenly be a 55′ IM swimmer. So, who cares. But, man am I going to feel stupid if I end up swimming a 1:15 or something.
How much do you swim?
Kelly O'Mara 
I think your plan sounds good! If I’m not specifically tri-training I TRY to swim 2x/week (sometimes don’t quite get that second swim in). During “race” season then at least 3. My goal for next year is to bump up to 5x/week, but at least 4. 🙂
Yeah, I feel the same way about swimming – from the hassle and the cold and all that, to the ‘even if I swim a ton it doesn’t make THAT much difference’. You could probably swim a bunch and get close to an hour or under, or not swim that much and swim like 5min slower. And for me, putting that extra time elsewhere (i.e. the bike) has a much greater return.
heh heh heh! When I was trying to train for a half IM, I was aiming for 2 swims per week. Even when I did my Olympic training I did 1 or 2 swims a week. Next year I’ll probably aim for 2-3x/week. As for off season…I’ll do 0 or 1. HA!!!