1800 yd swim - 10/4

I woke up last Friday morning with a sore throat.  I initially thought I maybe caught whatever the wife had (she was sick last week), but then it occured to me that I did run in the rain the night before, maybe that had something to do with it.  While I never got sick to the depths that my wife did (sinus infection, well timed to occur on the weekend of a wedding that she was in), it was enough to knock me off my planned schedule of running 15 miles over the weekend at planned marathon intensity to see how 15 miles with no walk breaks would feel.  Most of what ailed me was above my neck (some minor congestion, sore throat) - and so by some people thats not enough to warrant skipping out on a run, but I didn't want to take the chance that a long run would make things worse.  So I did nothing for a few days.

Now that I think of it, it seems like if something will happen, it'll happen a few weeks before a race.  A couple years ago I sprained my back 4 weeks before a sprint tri, earlier this year I came down with a hell of a sickness 3-4 weeks before the half iron in June, and here I am two weeks before my first full marathon and I'm fighting sniffles away.  Fortunately, the timing always seems to also be working out in such a way that it forces me to take some rest/recovery time, which is an imperative part of any training schedule.  Except that I don't really ever seem to actually schedule it - instead letting work travelling or sickness take care of that part.

After a couple nights of decent sleep back in the comfort of my own bed, I'm feeling quite a bit better.  Not 100%, but then again it seems that last 10% always takes a good week to really go away.  So now that I've declared myself un-sick, time to get going again! 

This is what I said to being sick:

I decided to go to the pool tonight, because it'd be the last swim I'd be able to do until next week, as we are going to be out of town for a few days on account of another wedding.  I can bring my running shoes with me - finding a place to swim while travelling is more difficult.

An odd thing happened today while I was swimming.  After a couple hundred yards of warming up, I started thinking back to what I was concentrating on last swim session, specifically trying to minimize the drag induced by my hand when breathing to the left.  Somehow, in thinking about that, I ended up with this fleeting feeling of being smoother in the water.  Before too long, I realized that I was seemingly bringing my elbow up higher prior to entering the water, and entering the water at a steeper angle.  Once I was conscious of this mechanic, I toyed around with it a bit, and found that it may actually help drive my hips more forcefully during the propulsion phase of the swim stroke.  The big question would be its sustainability - many times I've found things that seemed to make for a smoother stroke - but it is always difficult to tell because if it engages new muscles, they tire out before I have a real good chance to tell whether it is worth building them up or not.  But with this, it was just a matter of consciously thinking to raise my elbow up a bit and enter the water more steeply.  Lap after lap, I was able to sustain that.  So now the question is whether it is actually faster - which I'd be able to tell by todays result, but ultimately it'll take 3-4 sessions to get an idea of whether it actually makes a difference or not.

1800 yds (36 laps) - 30:53