Taking a swim

Time is flying – Tuesday I lacked the time to have my flat tyre repaired and to ride my bike. That really bothers me. I gonna take this session this week – somehow.

Anyway yesterday swimming was due so I set off and had my first session with increased distance, my shoulder still itching from Monday’s paddle training. Coach Ralf added loads of butterfly and that was… exhausting. A 2.5km swim with 600m leg kicks and almost 675m butterfly. Almost since in the end… I decided to be more cautious in butterfly to not hit others by mistake. Let’s assume it was 600m butterfly due to that.

Some things I learned in that session:

1. I am no longer a lame whale in the water in freestyle.
2. Some weaker swimmers on the sports lane were slower in freestyle than I was with my kickboard doing solely leg kicks – that was funny, considering how slow I was when I started with freestyle.
3. Doing leg kicks helps so much – more than I imagined. In my first few months I had moments, where I didn’t move forward at all or – even worse – went backward doing those kicks. *no kidding*
4. In butterfly I learned a lot in becoming faster and more “energy efficient” – that felt cool. Most of all I used my arms in the “pull”  before to get up – out of the water, where it is – of course – much better to push forward and only slightly up on the “pull”. That’s when I started to be faster than other swimmers, when I did butterfly yesterday.
5. A lot is one’s head when swimming freestyle. Picturing van Hazel’s smooth freestyle stroke made me swim faster and more relaxed – gonna stick to picturing it.
6. Increasing distance in swimming helps a lot. Four more weeks I will do this medium length and then I gonna try the long sessions of 4+ km.

I enjoyed the swim yesterday.

Yours truly

Martin