I'm still working on tweaking minor aspects of my swim stroke. Today I mostly concentrated on keeping my hand lower during the catch - I have a tendency, in my attempt to elongate my body as I reach my arm forward, to keep it outstretched. As a result, it tends to be closer to horizontal, and I can feel the drag it creates - as opposed to when it is lower (hand maybe more like 1 ft below the surface) and the induced drag feels less. I'm still not sure exactly why that is - you'd think that being horizontal in the water would be more streamlined. Maybe it is for the hand itself, but then again body position is affected by hand placement - and usually a large contributor to drag is the body itself, when the legs are lower than the torso. So by lowering the hand, it helps keep the rest of the body in a more streamlined position. At least, that's what seems to happen - so I'll go with that.
A few times during these swim sessions, I get a lap or two that feel exceptionally nice and smooth. I usually try and make a mental note of which laps they are so I can go back and look at those lap times to compare, but I usually forget, or after a lap of being conscious of how things feel really good, I end up inadvertantly trying harder (ie, using muscles more) which ends up being counterproductive. So I think one of the next goals will be to try and emulate those good feeling laps as much as I can - I at least have a sense of what the entire stroke should feel like, so it gives me a little bit of a direction.
54 laps - 45:47
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