Thursday, May 17, 2007

Learning to swim... Trip #2

I realize that these triathlon-related posts are INCREDIBLY GEEKY AND BORING. I apologize about that. But honestly, working out 1 - 3 hours a day seven days a week means that it's on my mind a lot... Plus, it's making me do things that are putting me WAY out of my comfort zone... so I guess that's why I'm thinking about it so much... Anyway, ignore it if it's boring... but really, that goes for everything anyway. Right?

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So I took my second little trip to the pool today... My second "swim workout", although, calling it that gives it WAY too much legitimacy! I did about ten 25M lengths [not laps (a in, out and back), LENGTHS (as in, out OR back)] stopping after each length to catch my breath. I stopped after each length because I had to!

Here's what I realized today:
- Swimming well seems to be the summation of 30 or 40 subtle, non-intuitive things. This is DEFINITELY NOT a linear sport like lifting weights or pounding out a bike ride.
- I need to slow way down. No, slower. No, seriously... slower.
- There's this neat little place in the middle of each stroke where if you do it right, you glide for like 1 second and it feels REALLY REALLY good... fish-like and not like you're slowly drowning in a clumsy, splashy way. I achieved this "fish state" literally only 3 times during my 10 lengths. That's like 3 strokes out of 500. It needs to be 500 out of 500.
- Hip rotation / movement -- I think this is where it's at, baby. I think it's gonna help everything if I learn to rote my hips each stroke: breathing, length, glide, etc
- The biggest thing that feels out of whack is the relationship between my getting / gulping air, my stroke and my heart and breathing rate. They feel completely disconnected.

That's all for now.

Oh, and yes. I said "fish state".

2 comments:

Kath said...

Has it helped that you've quit smoking?

John Common said...

Ummm... YES! I wouldn't be able to be doing all this craziness if I were still smoking and swilling scotch.

:-)