I went swimming this morning. Big deal, right?
Up until year 7, I went to 2 or 3 times a week in swimming season as well as school PE classes and then club on Friday nights. Once I hit year 8, the training went and I went to club every two weeks or so. Then that stopped in year 9 and all I had left was school carnivals and PE Class. I was not the best swimmer but I still could hold a reasonable pace.
Then I finished school and in all honesty, I don’t think I have done actual lap swimming since the carnival in year 12 that was 2002, it is almost 2006.
Since the summer of 2001/02, I think I have swum at the beach three times? In a pool maybe five times? If I said I lived in Ukhta, Russia, that answer may be quite reasonable but I don’t I live in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, we are on the coast line with glorious beaches up and down the coast line and a public pool 3 mins away, yet I can count on my hands the amount of times I have gone in the water.
Since I have the summer off, I decided it was a great time to stop talking about exercising and actually do something. Since it is too hot to ride a bike and if I go out walking I will just take a camera and not get any exercise, swimming reasoned to be the best idea, so I picked up a pair of speedos on Saturday, all ready to go on Tuesday morning, well I didn’t have a cap and you can’t swim without a cap, so I bought one on Tuesday night before work. Couldn’t go on Wednesday morning as I finished at midnight the night before which meant by the time I got up it would be too hot to go training. Then Matthew said he was to start work at 6am on Thursday, I thought great! That gives me a reason to be up early, I can drop you at work then go the pool!
So I did, I got there, paid my admission, put on my cap and got into the pool along with all the others there already.
I started off with freestyle, trying to go at a reasonable pace, yet I got to the other end of the 25m pool and had to have a breather, I eventually got up to doing 75m sets between breaks. After 15mins of freestyle I switched to breaststroke for another 20mins and then finished off with another 15mins of freestyle.
Back in the day at club, I used to dive in and do freestyle for 18m before I needed a breath and was pretty good at doing 5 strokes between breaths. Yeah well that was a while ago. Today for the most part it was stroke, breath, stroke, breath, however I did after a while get back into doing stroke, stroke, breath, stroke, stroke, breath 🙂 This is going to be a long process but worth it.
Observations on my swimming today.
Increase the kicking power; don’t let the arms do all the work.
Improve breathing.
Your technique is lazy, concentrate on stroke movement.
Get some goggles; chlorine eyes aren’t fun.