7 Distance Butterfly Swims That Might Make You Cringe in Pain

Warning! We don’t  recommend swimming long distance butterfly. For 99.9% of swimmers it is bad for technique. If you want to learn perfect butterfly technique watch Michael Phelps Essential: Twenty Butterfly Training Videos here.

1. Nia’s 500 yards butterfly

2. Elaine’s 900 yards butterfly

3. Doug Jelen swims 1650 yards of butterfly

4. Connor Wilkins and Mack Hamill swim 1500 meters butterfly

5. Romain Louedec swim the 3000 meters butterfly

6. Peter Scott  “attempts” a 9km crossing of the English Bay, Vancouver, BC, butterfly

7. River Dart 10k butterfly

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King of back butterfly
4 years ago

I train my 1000m butterfly daily within 25minutes without stop in 50m pool.
My top record was 50 minutes for 2000m without stop in 50m pool. However, I seldom perform it caused it was damn tired.
Believe or not , welcome to Malacca MBMB swimming to seek for the reality.

Amanda Finan
6 years ago

I swam 2 and 3 miles butterfly when I was 14/15 respectively 39/38 years ago. I’d regularly train at 1.5 miles at a time. Pool time was always an issue 🙂

ellie
6 years ago

and I thought the 100 was hard!

Bernd
7 years ago

I fell in love with long distance butterfly at the age of 43 (bad knees). Nowadays (50) I do swim nothing else (besides warming up with breaststroke + dolphin kicks), because nothing else satisfies me. No need to compete with youngers for speed, one can enjoy gliding. Especially open water is fun.

Daniel Projansky
9 years ago

Lot’s of talk about long distance butterfly. I do want to mention, if anyone does marathon swim events all butterfly like I have; you will be surprised at how few people really understand why anyone would want to do it. Also, race directors are not thrilled to have a flier. I was able to complete my 36 miler swim last year only because the race directors made concessions for me. Due to the fact that fly is a slower stroke, it also can be lonely as you watch from the start everyone distance you. One satisfing thing though: you may finish hours behind the pack, but you will always win the butterfly division.

cyrus Milne
Reply to  Daniel Projansky
9 months ago

Completely agree.
I have had issues with events allowing me to swim butterfly. I’m not quite at the 36mile level yet but I’m on my way there.

Andy
9 years ago

I try to do 1,000 meters 4 mornings a week. 28 mins to 29 mins depending on how many beers I had that weekend. it’s slow but I love the feeling of flying in the water. plus I really don’t have to stretch all that much. and I’m hoping I’ll loose some weight since I’m a fat ass.

Ross Bogue
9 years ago

Charlie, 1 mile is pretty short. I’m sure Mary T and others did that every day during lunch. Maybe if you took one of Vicki Keith’s Great Lakes swims and divided by 60?

BTW, I’ve done the 5k Big Shoulders fly 3 times. I’m hoping this year will be my 4th. But no, I’m horrible at sprints.

cyrus Milne
Reply to  Ross Bogue
9 months ago

What is the 5k Big shoulder?

9 years ago

This is great. I am trying to find out if there is any record of a woman swimming a 1 mile open water swim butterfly. We are tracking distance butterfly times at http://www.swimflyfast.com in a sanctioned non-crawl distance postal swim event, Butterfly is Not a Crime, and have one woman that has done this, Caroline Stein at 43 years old. Please contact me through that web site if you know of anyone.
Also if you have the urge to swim a 3×500 IM join in the fun. No crawl any order..