I was originally thinking I might end up waiting until later in the year, when I get a wetsuit, to extend my swimming distance beyond about 1.25 to 1.3 miles. Reason being is that when I rented a wetsuit, and felt how much easier and faster it is - I realized that my original plan of slowly building up to 2.4 miles over the winter in the pool was more conservative (and boring) than it needed to be. After a 1.3 mile swim in the wetsuit, I felt like it wouldn't take much to get the endurance to do a full 2.4 miles. Actually, it was one of those things where I could have done it that day, but my goal is to try and get 2.4 miles to the point where fatigue in any part of my body other than arms is minimal - and that would still need some work.
But today, other life events happened in such a way to allow me the luxury of being at the right place (open water) at the right time (before boats), with plenty of time - so I decided to take advantage of it and extend my swim distance a bit.
As is typical, I still started out a bit fast. I knew this before the first 1/10th mile or so, because I was starting to breath heavier, so I had to slow down a bit to catch my breath. And then, as usual, it took a good 10-15 minutes to feel like I finally settled into a rhythm. That whole transition from muscle sugar burning to fat burning is still something that I feel and notice during swimming.
It didn't help that my stomach had not been at its happiest for a while. I ate way too much at lunch on Friday, and on Friday evening my dinner consisted of about 2/3 of a bell pepper and a couple tomatoes. I think that was the only time I've ever had 100% vegetables for a meal, unless you count a baked potato. Anyhow, when I went to bed last night my stomach wasn't upset, but it wasn't really sure what to do with all that nutrition and fibre without other stuff to dilute it a bit. This morning I had a balance bar (as usual), but also had a bit of a fruit smoothie (homemade recipe). Unfortunately my stomach still wasn't feeling digestive. So, long story short, twisting and turning and ingesting pond water wasn't #1 on my list of things to look forward to.
BUT - I managed. Predictably, my pace started to drop off right around the 1.25 mile mark, which both is and is not a surprise. It is a surprise because I felt for sure - during this swim and others - that after about 3/4 mile, my form really starts to noticably suffer. My rotation starts to get more sloppy, my kick gets sloppier, and my legs start to drag. So it is a surprise to see my pace for miles 0.75 - 1.25 maintaining a sub 8:30 pace. However, it is not a surprise to see my pace fall off after that simply because I've done very few, if any, swims beyond about 1.4 miles. If what I've found to hold true for running and biking (its that distance when pushing beyond already established limits that is the slowest and worst) holds true for swimming, that would be right about the exact time that I'd start to slow down.
During that last couple 1/4 miles, though - I did have a change in my form that I was toying around with. I was just trying to maintain better streamlining, but in the process I think my arm turnover dropped, which could certainly account for the drop in pace. I felt more streamlined, so I think there is a valuable takeaway to be had - it is just a matter of putting it all together.
One last thing I found about this swim - Terry Laughlin (TI developer/coach/whatever) talks about having mental endurance during a swim. Yeah there's the physical endurance of moving your arms and having the core strength to keep the body aligned, but there is also mental endurance in consciously thinking about every stroke to make it as efficient as possible. I felt like I started to make some headway with regards to that mental endurance. So far my mental endurance has been limited to just being able to zone/phase out and let time pass, keeping a high level overview of my stroke to make sure it is coming out as I'd like. But I feel like I made some progress in the area of sensing what it should be like to really analyze every stroke on the fly - so I'll have to work on developing that part of mental endurance.
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