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I'd suggest 45 minute sessions to start with, but less for the first week or 2 just while your body gets used to it. You can swim up to twice a day but that's pretty hard out.. I guess the equivilent of how much you were running.
Before you get into swimming by yourself, I strongly suggest getting lessons of some sort. Getting the technique right will help hugely (it will affect your comfort, and your speed immensly). When you start out don't expect to be able to do butterfly, and perhaps not even breastroke or backstroke.
Once you've got your technique sorted, make sure you do different stuff each time you go. I suggest creating a exercise plan, or get a professional to do it for you. As a basic guide each workout should include a warmup, some distance stuff, then some sets of hard sprints, then relatively hard stuff, some medium stuff, then a warmdown. I'd do some technique work (pull only, kick only, less breaths, etc) a bit after doing the sprints.
Try timing yourself for different things i.e. 50m each stroke, 200m medly (50m of each stroke), 400m freestyle, and see how you progress each month.
When you do sprints, only have a short break between each sprint (15 sec or so), do not take longer.
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