Last Saturday, the day before the Webster Lake Tri, I had a session with a TI coach. I knew that I had picked up a lot from the TI book and DVD, but still felt like I could make some improvements. The problem I had been dealing with was that I was limited in my feedback that could be used to improve my form - having a third party see my mechanics could potentially provide some tweaks and tips that could improve things.
I was slightly dubious at first, because the session would be in open water, and not the clear water of a pool. But I was pleasantly surprised when, right away, the coach found a couple things that I could improve on:
1) Arm entry was too far ahead. This was causing my mid-section to dip a bit into the water, and increase drag
2) My left arm had a tendency to reach to the center line, instead of straight ahead. The result was that every time the left arm pulled, it would guide me to the right just slightly. Certainly explains why I have had a hard time swimming in a straight line.
3) Practice the skating drill to get muscle memory for where the arm, hand, head and body position should be.
4) Tips to improve sighting
5) Tips to improve swimming around bouys
So with these items in mind, I went to the pool to work on the first three items. I did a few laps of skating on either side to start getting accustomed to that, but found that with kicking providing the only propulsion, I was running out of breath quickly. So my focus became items #1 and #2 - looking for nothing more than just repitition so that the change in mechanics started to feel normal.
I timed every 50 yd lap, and found that each one was consistently around 55 seconds (closer to 50 initially, closer to 58 towards the end). All in all, it was about 1200 yds of swimming.
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