Did more swimming today.
I counted up the hash marks on my “No Days Off” calendar from Tracksmith, and I’ve actually done more swim workouts than runs this year! This makes sense when you remember that I went from never having done the crawl or backstroke to completing my first two open water sprint triathlons this summer. Serious time investment was needed to make sure I could even compete safely!
I’m very optimistic about the swim portion of Tri For a Cure this July. I’m making a lot of process on technique.
Here’s a video of a swim drill my trainer had me doing this morning. I’m working on breathing by just turning my head, not letting my forward arm sink, and keeping my shoulders stacked and not rotating. You can see that I’ve made much more progress on one side than the other. When I’m facing the wall, my forward hand drops, I pull my head up and out of the water to breathe, and my kick widens a lot. It’s better (though not perfect) on the side where I’m facing the buoys.
Swimming is fun because with each drill there’s something specific to focus on, so it’s always interesting. When I go on my own, I will do 10 minutes where I’m focusing on kicking, 10 minutes where I’m really trying to turn my head to breathe keeping it low to the water, 10 minutes on keeping my arms straight and my hips stacked, and so on. It’s methodical as we work on each piece of muscle memory to tie everything together and tackle one aspect of swimming at a time.
So maybe there’s a little more to it than “just keep swimming”. And that’s what makes it so fun.