Finding a groove

It has been a while since I wrote here and I apologize to anyone who might care.

Lat week I thought it would be a good idea to go to 3 days a week. It turned out to be a more complicated endevor than I knew. See fridays are sprint days and if wednesday is not a hard day( read technical session)I end up not really swimming for 3 days then sprinting on friday and being sore all weekend. I don't think my shoulders can handle this kind of schedule.
I am back on every day that there is practice although I skipped monday as I was afraid that the snow shoveling that I would be doing later would add up to too much shoulder work.

I do like being up early and this morning I woke at 5 and was able to do a bit of sketching before practice.

I am all over the place with my stroke and pacing. I know my lane mates arent crazy about swimming with me as sometimes I am fast and other times I am so slow and winded.
The issue at this point is all of the things that I have to keep in my head at once regarding stroke: Arms out front. rolling breath and reaching breath, kicking, keeping neck relaxed. I think I need to swim for a few months to let all of this sink in and hopefully I would come out of it with not too many bad habits.

I guess it all comes down to laps.

The weather has been so totally crappy. The good thing is that it hasnt been too snowy at night and the car doesnt need too much attention in the early morning. It is hard getting in the pool as the deck area has been pretty cold. After about 200 meters I get into it again and it is all good.

No swimming on xmas day which is good as we are going to have another storm. Back on friday./ Shea promised that the sprints wouldn't be too brutal. Thanks Shea!

Merry christmas.

Every other day

So I decided to start practicing on MWF and using the the other two mornings for writing. I really enjoy getting up at 5:45 and writing comes easy at that time for me so it works out. I think my shoulders need a bit of recovery time between practices. Hopefully three days a week will be enough.

We had another stroke clinic today. It focused on Backstroke. Pretty good stuff to learn- starts, turns and stroke. I don't really like to swim backstroke but all of the clinic subjects came pretty easy today. Maybe I need to reconsider not liking it...

The other nice aspect of the stroke clinic is that it mixes everyone up and I get a chance to swim and meet with people I wouldn't be swimming with otherwise.

below is an interesting computer model of the skeleton doing the 4 IM strokes. It shows what muscles are working at every stage. Pretty cool.

This week finished in a great way as we did really hard series of sprints- all out after a warm up of 1000meters. We started with all out 25s then 50s then 100 the last 50 was butterfly. Great and body breaking workout. Nice to have the weekend to recover.

I wonder if it is worth going to 3 days a week for the recovery process.? any thoughts?

Hooked

Today is my 40th birthday and I had a nice suprise related to swimming. Practice today was a clinic and not too much of a workout. We did a few hundred yards and then broke up into groups and worked on starts, turns and stroke. All very usefull and good.
My suprise was that I was really disappointed in not getting an ass kicking workout. Who would have thought? Today I woke up feeling well rested and was itching to get moving in the pool. The fact that I felt that way was a nice suprise and I feel like I have really made it over the hump.
A great birthday present.

After all... I took on this challenge with the idea of being in a new lifestye excercise routine in honor of turning 40.
I got my wish.

I made it!

I started this blog by saying that I wanted to swim for three weeks straight before I made a decision regarding whether or how often to continue. Today was an awesome experience.

The workout was fast-paced and tough. We did 26x 75meters on a decreasing inteval. After five or so my lane mates and i put on fins to be able to make the interval. There was a time during the 20th or 21st where I thought I might really get sick. Fortunately that passed and we were able to do it. On the last set we were coming in right on the send off for the next.

We swam a total of 1950meters (1.2 miles) at a pretty good clip.

It was very difficult but man it felt great afterward (more so emotionally than physically). I wouldn't have dreamed three weeks ago that I could have done a workout like this.I can really feel a big difference in my shoulder and torso muscles. They are feeling thick and toned.

I am feeling great about swimming and ready to continue it. I think every day is working well for me at this point.

I took this on thinking that I needed an exercise routine- I didn't expect it to be so great.

See ya next week- I am going to sleep in.

Turns

Although I don't have the lung capacity yet to be able to do flip-turns with long glides after swimming multiple laps with any speed, I am gearing up for learning the motions.

Here is a great video that breaks it down.



My coach, Shea says the best place to practice the turns is not near the wall but in the middle of the pool. Take a few strokes and flip. Take a few strokes and flip. After the tucking and rolling is in muscle memory then the wall is added.

The interesting thing about watching these videos is the arm position going into the turn and the arm position coming out. The arms just stay put.

The other thing that I need to practice is coming out of the turn on my back and turning over after the push. Part of my problem is I blow air out of my nose when I filp to keep the water out. Swimming upside down underwater takes more air still. By the time I come to the surface I have absolutely no air left and am desperate to breathe.

Apparently in Januar there will be a 1 hour swim with the goal of swimming the maximum distance. I am a bit afraid of it but I think it will be fun. Barry are you up for it? I think we can psyche each other up(out?). I wonder if it is a good idea to do a practice hour swim for comparison purposes?

'Nuff of that!

Ok, this blog is getting really boring to write and read. Yeah it is hard to get up early and do strenuous excercise. Got it. Done.

Now I want to focus on the art of swimming and the study of it.

Check out this videa. Pretty incredible the energy Thorpe spends before he even does his first stroke.

new week

Monday it is. I was poorly disciplined this weekend and stayed up late on saturday night watching episodes of "the Wire" on dvd. Wow, what a cool show. 5:45 seemed earlier than last week. Once I got to the pool it was ok. The first few laps were hard but as I got warmed up it went OK.

Shea, the coach gave me some good advice on head position. Apparently my head is full of water and doesnt really sink or float. I was holding mine too high and having the top of the head out of the water was pushing the rest of my body down too far under the surface. These habits are hard to break. I like to see where I am going. Looking straight down will take some getting used to.

Turns are another thing that I need practice on. I am so out of breath each length that I use the turn as a cheat for a couple of breaths. I need to go to the pool and practice flips without being out of breath.


Lets see what this week holds...