For the past couple of years I've been pushing against a barrier with my swimming but some changes I've made to my technique recently have paid dividends.
I'm not a great swimmer by any stretch of the imagination and with only 1-2 swim sessions per week I wasn't expecting to make a lot of progress in terms of conditioning, but I've always been open to technique improvements because I know how important it is.
In general the technique changes I've made (largely due to a couple of good sessions with a swim coach) haven't made me much faster - but they have been instrumental in feeling more comfortable in the water and laying a foundation for further work. Not looking quite so much as a muppet also helps.
After the nasty running injuries of last year sent me into the gym I thought some upper body strength work would help but despite building some extra muscle I was a little disappointed to see no real improvement in my swimming, so I just did my sessions with little hope of making progress as I am fairly comfortable with being a slow swimmer.
A couple of months back I was looking up something to do with kick boards and came across the Swim Smooth website. I had a really good read through it and decided to try making a few changes to see how they feel.
The first was to go back to breathing on every 3rd stroke instead of every 2nd. I'd started breathing more often because I felt I could go faster if it wasn't for the oxygen deprivation / CO2 buildup. It didn't make a lot of difference but I felt more comfortable so I stuck with it.
I'd been thinking about going back to breathing on the 3rd stroke anyway because I felt better balanced and smoother in the water. To deal with the oxygen deprivation the advice was to breathe out further and do so smoothly. It took a couple of sessions to get used to it but I felt much better and it wasn't making me any slower as far as I could tell, so I decided to keep swimming that way.
The other change I made was with kicking, to keep my knees straight and kick from the hip. Being a triathlete I don't kick much anyway, but this change helped to straighten my posture to the point where my legs were higher in the water which meant less drag. It also meant my face was a little deeper in the water which is slightly disconcerting at first but wasn't hard to deal with.
I've always measured my swim in 500m blocks as that's what I used to do before I started a structured training programme. I'd usually do 4 to 6 sets of 500m in a session. My goal was to do 500m in under 10 minutes and I'd been making very slow progress from about 12:00 at first to 11:00 then about 10:30 (this is in a 25m pool). About a month ago I had my first long set for a while - a 1500m time trial. My split for the first 500m was 9:53. Stoked.
It doesn't end there though - that was just after a gym session as a lot of my swims are. Later that week I had a 4x500m session to do after a 2hr bike so the arms would be in good shape. The first and last were to be done at an easy pace but the middle pair were about 9:30 each. Then last week I had another 4x500m set done fresh with very similar timings, so it's definitely not a fluke. I then backed that up a couple of days ago with my next 1500m time trial - first time under 30 minutes (29:52).
I have to say I've been a bit lucky with those recent swims that I've actually had either a clear lane or another swimmer who's the same speed (or just polite and stops when I get too close, a rare thing which I really appreciate).
So with a few simple technique changes and some time to adapt I've knocked a good couple of minutes off my 1500m time.
In other news, I'm still collecting more injuries. It started with a sore / tight glute, then I had some calf issues in smaller muscles that my physio says can't be stretched. Now I've picked up a problem in my foot which feels like it could be in the middle of the plantar so that could be quite troublesome. My current line of thinking is that they derive from each other so I really should have taken some time off to get the glute sorted early on.
I've done all the work I need to for my race in Melbourne (half marathon) so I've decided to stop trying to train through and rest. After the race I'll rest some more and get these bloody injuries sorted out for good. I'll probably have to skip the Rolf Prima Half Ironman in Ashburton which is a shame as I'd have liked to have a better go at it this year.
