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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