Today is the first day I felt well enough to get back to training, so off to the pool I went. I had a mixed day. I started off just warming up and running through a couple of Total Immersion drills. Then I tried to punch out 9 laps as best as I could. In a little over a week I will need to do 9 laps for my first training tri so that is my goal.
Here are my stats:
8 Laps 400 yards in 30 minutes. That includes the warm up of maybe 5 minutes or so.
I was struggling though I averaged a 140HR that spiked above 150 each length of the pool. So instead of doing the last lap, I decided to work on some more drills.
Here are the issues that I have that I really need to focus on:
- I am still struggling to keep my breath
- I can tell that my form on the recovery part of my left arm is really bad, I need to get it to match the right which is much better
- I am kicking too much and too hard
- I’m carrying my head too high in the water
I think a lot of these tie together. Let me explain:
My head is too high and that is causing me to kick too much to try to keep balanced. The extra kicks are making my heart rate go up and making me breathe too heavily. The left arm is just an issue of coordination.
So as I said, I worked on drills. I forced my head further into the water and immediately felt that downhill swimming feeling that they talk about in Total Immersion. I worked on slowing down the stroke for the drill, and things started feeling good. I was breathing easier, I was making better forward progress, and things were feeling about right. Now I just need to ingrain that feeling, and build up some swim endurance.
After some short drills, I tried doing some full lengths with the same slow pace that I did the drills, and things felt much easier!