I didn't post about my Wednesday swim. Really, there's not much to say about a swim. There's water, and there's me.... doing something vaguely resembling swimming. Back and forth, over and over. Wednesday I kind of wimped out. I made it to the pool, but I couldn't bring myself to do more than 100 yards at a time. With this in mind, I spent my pool time working on my form and efficiency through the water. Head tucked in, feet pointed, hips...I don't know what you would call it. Basically I try to point the base of my spine up as much as possible so that my body glides along the top of the water rather than dragging through it. I did 1,000 yards of this, 100 yards at a time. It wasn't really much of a workout, but I think it was productive time. I say that because of today's swim.
For today's swim I was determined to do the routine. I also wanted to time myself for a comparison to some of my previous swims. I knew I had been averaging about 2:30 per 100 yards about 90 days ago, which is probably really slow but I don't really care at this point. I just want to be able to go the distance. I only wanted to time myself this morning to see if my efforts to improve my efficiency are really helping. I can now do 100 yards in right at 2:00. A 30 second improvement over 100 yards is pretty good. Over the course of 600 yards I averaged a little more than 2:00/100, but part of that is due to my inefficient turns. I'm not using the flip turn. It's just too exhausting. I've also improved my strokes per 25 yards. I was averaging 20-22 prior to trying to make some improvements in my form and now I'm consistently at 18 or 19 and sometimes as low as 17. And that's in my parachute swim trunks. I'm curious to see what the difference will be when I get some real swim gear.
My routine consisted of 1X600, 1X300, 4X100, and 4X50. It's the first time I've done the full workout since last Friday but it didn't seem particularly difficult. The most difficult part consistently is getting over the mental hurdle of convincing myself to make the turn after the first 100 yards. I need to get to where I'm doing a full workout 3 times a week consistently at some point. It's just so dull going back and forth in the pool. Thankfully, even though I'm not consistently doing three days a week, I feel like I'm still progressing. Consistent running is definitely helping. If I were only swimming, I don't think I'd still be making progress. The running keeps a good strong baseline for my heart and lungs. The key to swimming is just remembering the motions and knowing that I can't push myself nearly as hard in the pool as I can on the pavement.
Next up: Long run this weekend, then I start over with a swim on Monday morning. Right now I'm looking forward to it. I may feel differently when the alarm goes off Monday at 5:30AM.
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