Like a Fish

The toughest part of my training is swimming. I started swimming in March, and my form was horrible. I struggled to keep my face in the water, and I couldn't do more than one length of the pool without resting. Now, I can swim 2.4 miles in under an hour and a half without much trouble. It's tiring and I want to improve my time, but doing the distance isn't a huge challenge for me right now. That's a lot of progress in 6 months. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean my work is done. Not by a long shot.

I need to improve my form. The video shows the type of form I'm striving for. Watch how effortlessly he glides through the water. He barely disturbs the water. He makes swimming look so easy. Of course, there is no way I will acquire form like that in the next 12 months. Bill Kirby is an Olympic gold medalist. But it gives me something to shoot for.

Yesterday and today were the first times I went to the pool with a good, solid plan. I wrote down my workout and stuck to it. I started with a warmup, followed that up with some drills to work on form, then did some main sets for endurance and speed and finished off with a cool down. Yesterday's main set was short intervals - sprints. That's the first time I've done sprints in the pool, and they were brutal.

Today, I did longer distances to work on endurance and I was still feeling it from the sprints. I also worked on breathing on my left side which is terribly difficult for me. My left side just doesn't work right. It's like my right side competes in the Olympics and my left side competes in the Special Olympics. But I made some progress so that was good. Then I finished off my workout by practicing flip turns. That was interesting. I really, really suck at flip turns. Like I said, my work isn't done. Not by a long shot.