What does 105100m for 2 hours look like

Imagine holding 105 pace per 100 for almost two hours. No walls, no turns, just precision, every stroke efficient, every breath measured. How do you move that fast, that long, without falling apart? What does your catch need to feel like? How do you stay smooth when the ocean, the pack, and your own heartbeat are fighting you? Nick Sloman isn't the biggest guy on the start line, he wasn't a child prodigy, but through 12 years of work he turned efficiency into his edge, earning his place at Paris 2024. After missing Tokyo, he rebuilt, not by swimming harder, but by learning how to swim smarter. And the way he talks about feeling the water might just change how you think about endurance and technique forever. Hi, I'm Nick Sloman, five-time Australian open water champ, five-time world championship representative, also six-time surf race champion as well. Something that I'm really trying to work on at the moment, I know Craig's really anal about my head position, I struggle with trying to keep it down because in the open water I'm always constantly looking up. And so my head position is generally fairly neutral. I'm always trying to look down at the tee or at the sand in open water. It might not always be like that. Under fatigue I generally look up a little bit, but I've been trying to try and obviously relax the traps and try and keep my head as neutral as possible. I know I want to try and keep my legs as buoyant as possible, so for me trying to suck my hips up a little bit, almost like ass to the sky, and sort of chest down, that way I can sort of stay on top of the water. Because in open water you're trying to almost be how fast can you swim slow essentially, and that allows you to swim long distances easily, but also just trying to stay on top of the water is where you want to be. A kick for me is more about balance. I know historically I've had quite a strong kick. I've been really trying on limiting the kick for longevity of my career as well as trying to have that change of gear and that last sort of 1,000. So for me it's a soft sort of three beat I would say. I've been working on trying that the one beat, so one kick per stroke, and obviously when I'm picking up the pace it's going to be quite frequent six beat kick. That's what I've been trying to do sort of the last sort of six months. I've really been trying to focus on efficiency. I know Singapore was one to sort of really highlight my inefficiency when it came to my heart rate and stuff in comparison to everyone else. So I've been really trying to work on trying to limit that kick, try and swim as fast as I have been, but with less propulsion from the legs. It's pretty stable, like it's to the left. I know it's probably not the greatest habit to get into, but just if I can reach out on my right arm and get purchase on that, I find that I'm a little bit more balanced and frequency of breath is very important for swimming long distances every two feet. I've been working recently on trying to get pressure on the outside of my hand. I know that I have a tendency to kind of push out on my stroke, so that's something that I've sort of thought about is getting the pressure on my outside of my hand and almost pulling across myself because I want that cross body connection. Obviously I'm a smaller guy, so I want to be able to use my whole body rather than just my arms and legs to get as fast as I can. So that outside of the hand will allow me to kind of pull across and use my other hip to get purchase on the water. When I was a junior, there wasn't much technical expertise. It was more how hard can you go for as long as you can. Now that I'm obviously moving with Craig, we're analyzing it a little bit more and just trying to find that one percent. Obviously when I was younger, I'd look at videos and look at champions when watching them on TV and just trying to almost copy them and almost have a habit of almost picking up what they're doing and their bad habits almost. So over the years, I've kind of just almost trying to find my own technique and what works best for me and finding little cues like the outside of the hand and that one big kick and just try and find as much efficiency as I can essentially. I'm quite high. Typically over a 10k, I'll sit at 40 strokes a minute. Towards the end, maybe up towards 50. Typically sitting around that 41-42 rate on average. My head position is probably one that Craig's most anal about. In open water, it probably doesn't matter too much because you're constantly looking up to sight. But in pool, you've almost got to be perfect or as close to perfect as you can and that head position allows my ass to get up and have a better body position. When I'm in the pool, it's probably what I'm focusing on the most. The rule that I kind of work against is when I'm heading into the chop, I want to rate up with my arms and then when I'm going with it, I want to rate up with my legs. Typically that's worked best for me. Higher rates, I know I can get in a better rhythm even though it may be inconsistent chop or anything like that. I can find a little bit more balance with a higher rating. When I'm going with it, I can relax a bit more and conserve in that way. But I also want to lift up my back end so that I'm actually catching those runs. I would say once every 10 strokes. It would also change on the length of swim as well and how many people are around me. If it's a large pack and I've got guys either side of me, it'd be less. Maybe in a relay, it'd be even once every three or four strokes because the line is very important. You don't want to be swimming too far off course when time is of the essence. I guess it just depends on the distance and what I'm trying to achieve. Again, it depends on what I'm trying to achieve. If I'm quite fatigued and I know the people around me are in a better position, then I'm probably going to stick to the hip to try and slow them down. But if I want to conserve as much energy, then I might drop to the feet so they can swim a bit quicker. Again, it just depends on what I'm trying to achieve. Earlier on in my career, I was averaging close to 80k a week. It's a little bit less now. It's probably around 70k a week. In Hungary, I got close to 100k and half of that was other strokes. It's just the Hungarian training regime. They just love doing, obviously, different strokes with different muscle groups and stuff like that. It was probably the most mentally taxing period of my career, but I've learned a lot from that from an endurance perspective. There's a reason why they're the best in the world. It's like a make or break situation. I quite like the more challenging sets. From a mental perspective, I feel like I've achieved something. I always like doing the 30 ones, even though it was extremely tough. The 30 ones on 140, just best average. As much as in the moment, I'm probably hating myself, but I just feel like I can get the most out of that from an endurance perspective. Probably more so now. The set I did this morning was two 300s paddles pull buoy, just relaxing A2, and then off the back of that, 400 best effort. We do that maybe four or five times. I try to hold under a minute if I can. On my best days, I can hold 57, 58. Then on my bad days, it'd probably be around that one minute, 101. Of late, I've really been trying to hit out more heart rate zone rather than a pace. With my zone to work anywhere between 130 to 140 beats per minute, maybe like a 108, 107. My strength is really in that 170 to 180 zone where I can hit down to that 101, 102 pace. Historically, I've been able to hold that for pretty much all day. Then anywhere in the red zone would be anything under a minute. I think it's an Ian Thorpe set, it's where we did nine 400s. We start on five and we drop 10 seconds each time. They do it in sets of three. We'll go five minutes, 450, 440, back up to 450, and then 440, 430, then go back up to 440, 430, 420. The idea of that is to start at A1, A2, A3, and then A2, A3 threshold, A3 threshold, the O2 max. By the end of the set, I'm hitting close to four minutes. I would typically start at an A1, maybe like a 440, like 110 pace, and then it will be dropping maybe five to 10 seconds each 400. There are a couple in recent years. Swimming in the sand in Paris was one of the toughest for its own environmental reasons. We were swimming against a current that was over one meter per second. It was good while you were going with it, but when you came back into it, there was only really one spot where you could sit. It was very physically demanding. Another one would be Singapore just went. We were in temperatures outside of 36 degrees plus. In the water, it would have been over 32 degrees on average. I ended up being over 180 beats per minute for one and a half hours. That was tough physically. I left that almost on a stretcher. There's been many races where I've been pulled out and taken to hospital. It's almost one of those things that I don't know when to stop. I just find a whole other level of focus and can push myself past what's physically capable of myself. Those races really spring to mind with physicality and also mental fortitude as well. You get to halfway and you think, oh ----, am I going to do it or whatnot. Those races of recent times have been extremely tough. What my old coach JR used to instill in me is discipline. You rest when you're dead, essentially mentality. It was all those work that I did leading into it. I didn't really want it to go to waste. There was 11 years where I didn't really take a break, bigger than two weeks. That was forced because of hotel quarantine. Those times spring in the back of my head and basically tell me not to give up and just to keep going.