Sunday, October 23, 2011

2250 yd swim - 10/23

It's not often you look at your stop watch and have to do a doubletake on the time and laps to make sure it really read what you thought it read.

A few swimming sessions ago, I remarked how I came across a small mechanical difference that I felt made me more smooth in the water - but the problem was that the feedback loop was rather long and would take a few sessions to determine whether that change translates to an actual advantage.

In my previous session, I got off to a crap start, and it took until over half way through the workout before I finally felt myself slipping into a good mechanical rhythm.  With the contrast of the bad form vs good form fresh in my mind, I went to the pool today determined to nail it right from the start with a solid sense of how the form needed to feel.  I was looking to keep my head down (I tend to face forward slightly), rotate the shoulders just a tad more, higher angle of attack on the arm during the entry (aided by the greater rotation), and lower hand position during the catch (especially on the right-hand side, because I was tending to push down with my right hand to lift my head out of the water when breathing from the left).

As usual, I the first handful of laps were a combination of nice and easy (from being rested) and stress inducing (from having a very fixed breathing rhythm instead of an ad-hoc one).  Even though I always feel pokey on the first lap, it always tends to be a good 6-7 seconds faster than my eventual average.  So I know I still start off way too fast, which doesn't help when combined with not being able to breathe whenever I damn well please.

But after a few hundred yards, I started to settle down - the breathing became more regulated, I became more relaxed, etc.  At that point, I just started cruising along.  I noticed after a while - somewhere around the laps in the late 20's and early 30's that I actually started feeling like I was catching my breath more as time went on.  That was very strange - I don't know that I've ever felt like I was regaining energy while swimming before.

The 45 total laps went by pretty quickly again.  I think a big part might be the novelty and excited feeling of sensing an improvement in stroke efficiency - when it feels right, I just want to keep doing it, shouting a 'YEAH!' to myself every time. 

By the end of the workout, I stopped my counter and checked the time - 37:59.  Are you flipping kidding me?!  My previous swim of this length was clocked at 39:44 - almost two minutes slower!  I don't think I've seen a time drop like that in my swimming since I switched to Total Immersion.  Sure, I gained 30 seconds here, a minute there, as I went from the 37-38 minute range for a mile down to about 31 minutes, but those were major mechanical changes that were the swimming equivalent of low hanging fruit.  Having already gotten to the 31 minute range for a mile, even improving by ten seconds consistently is a worthwhile improvement - nevermind well over a minute.

I'm hoping that novelty doesn't wear off soon - but just in case it does, I'm thinking maybe I should now start extending to 54 laps - a full 1.5 miles.

2250 yards
37:59

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