Great Lessons

Today was a great day for me. I was finally able to get some pool time with my "coach". I believe this will prove to be an invaluable lesson in form and will provide me with a great deal of stability and (hopefully!) speed.

Today, I learned one mega lesson - slow down to speed up! This was taught to me through the other lessons I learned, namely that I am not a windmill. And even if I were a windmill, there is very little wind IN the water.

I began the swim (a good 200y fs set, just to assess my current form) with plenty of nerves sloshing through the water. I wanted to make a good impression, not tilt my hips, high elbows, good arm entry, good head position, good breathing... I neglected to think about the actual motion of my arms. I also, apparently, am not as good in the legs as I suspected.

We proceeded to work some drill sets and focused mainly on my glide, using "catch up" to illustrate the point. A few times I became overwhelmed with the amount of information I was trying to process and it really showed in my body. Hard to hide bad form in the pool.

Fortunately, my coach is very patient and took great care trying to get the message through my (unusually) thick skull. We worked on a 3T drill, which was very beneficial regardless of how exhausting it is. I will be doing a lot more of that in the coming weeks, I think.

A workset of 6x50y on 1:10 proved fairly fruitful and I was happy with the results, three laps at :56, two at :55 and one at :54, not too bad. I found myself windmilling a few times and tried to regain my focus as quickly as possible.

I felt that the whole experience was very much needed. I am grateful for the opportunity and wish I had had it earlier in the season, but I intend to capitalize on the insight as much as possible over the coming weeks.

For Sunday, I will just try to think long instead of short and smooth instead of choppy. Four heats of 75ppl at a time in Lasker Pool should be very interesting. I hope I am able to finish well and I hope that my transitions, nutrition and hydration are all managed well. Even though it's only a sprint, I should still put together my race plan soon.