Still taking time off from running due to the IT band irritation (which is resulting in a secondary irritation, as it is incredibly frustrating to be missing this much training time!), I decided I mine as well keep active by a long swim. The other reason for doing a long swim is the upcoming olympic distance triathlon on August 30, where the swim portion is an entire mile.
Previously, the longest swim I had done in one continuous session was a few weeks ago, when I did the 0.8 miles in the lake. Today I returned to the lake, and did a full up and back lap. With a single lap distance of 0.65 miles, the shortest distance was 1.3 miles. However, I am not very good at sighting while swimming, so I tended to veer off course a bit. Quite a bit, actually. I wouldn't be surprised if I added a full tenth of a mile to the overall distance.
The primary goal of this swim was to engrain the two beat kick into muscle memory and get it so that it felt natural, and to get my old kicking style to feel unnatural. In this goal, I was largely successful.
A secondary goal was to start becoming more familiar with breathing from the opposite side. Last time in the lake, I started out with bilateral breathing, but ended up giving up quickly, and did all my breathing from the same side. This time, I went with a slightly different strategy - instead of doing full bilateral breathing, I'd breath for a few strokes on one side, and then switch to the other side. This allowed me to work on breathing from the opposite side without needing the extra aerobic capacity to last three strokes instead of two. It also allowed me to return to my comfortable side to give myself a breather, of sorrts. Finally, I was hoping that my alternating sides, my swimming would be straighter because I'd be more balanced. This result didn't come to fruition because, as it turns out, my mechanics are vastly different on one side than on the other - and that results in not swimming straight.
Finally, the last goal was overall form with the total immersion system. Having more time to become familiar and feel more natural with the highlights - pressing the bouy (which I didn't do to well at this time), keeping the head down (which I did a reasonable job of), and using the roll and catch to generate power (which I did an OK job of).
Lap 1: 25:20 (avg HR 170/end HR 168)
Lap 2: 4:23 (break)
Lap 3: 30:04 (avg HR 169/end HR 177)
Overall, considering it was, by far, the longest continuous swim I've ever done, I felt pretty good at the end. My arms, while tired, were not as fatigued as they've been in the past when swimming - a testament to the fact that I'm cutting through the water more efficiently as well as not using my shoulder muscles to generate as much of the power required to move through the water. My time for a 50 yd distance may actually be slower at the moment, but I'm swimming more efficiently - and at the moment, that is what I care about most.
However, the fact that my arms were fatigued is also an indication that I'm still not as efficient as I should be, and thus I am still needing to generate power from my arms to some degree. While I started feeling more comfortable with the two beat kick - I knew from the beginning that my method to doing so was not going to be as low drag as it should be. Instead of performing the kick and returning the legs to a neutral position (feet together) in preparation for the next kick, I actually kept the feet apart until the opposite kick stroke. The reason for this is that I wanted to make sure I performed the kick with the proper leg at the proper time. While this results in a two-step learning process, I wanted to make sure I had the overall rhythm of the two beat kick, if nothing else.
The other major problem was sighting. The first lap I was zigzaging quite a bit - everytime I looked up, I was off course. I was much better the second time around. But a large part of why I was going off course was because the balance of power generated when breathing from one side is quite different than when breathing from the other. In other words, my mechanics for the opposite side breathing are not nearly as efficient.
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