I went back and swam at the community center pool for the first time in a long time. I had been involved with the Master swim group for the last six months I think. That session just ended and a new session just started. But at this point I am thinking of discontinuing the master swim group. I am questioning whether I got much out of it. For the most part, I would show up, they would give me a schedule of drills to do. I would swim them with minimal interaction from the coach and then I would leave. I can get swim schedules out of a book or online. I hoped that I would get possibly some one-on-one work to help me improve my swim stroke, but the coaches never got in the water or really helped much with that. So anyway I went back to the community center today and swam for about an hour. I managed to swim about 2650 yards. It felt pretty good. I swam fairly easily, listening to my music, doing freestyle one direction and backstroke the other. I had a lane all to myself for most of the hour then for about the last 15 or 20 minutes shared it with another girl. For the most part sharing a lane wasn’t that bother some, other than occasionally while I was doing backstroke hitting her with my arm lightly or hitting the ropes.
Another benefit of switching from the masters swim program to the community center would be I can train for distances again. And also I can train on different nights that would fit in better with the rest of my training schedule.
I have learned that when I get water in my ears while swimming, I get dizzy and nauseous. So I started wearing ear plugs. I bought some Nike Silicone Ear Plugs at the local sporting goods store. They were about four dollars for four of them. I started using them, and they worked okay. They wouldn’t always seal the best. If I took them out to talk to someone, and then put them back in, they never sealed very well.
After I had used both sets to the point they didn’t work very well anymore, I went to buy another pair. But the sporting good store seemed to have put their swimming stuff away for the winter. But I found some silicone putty type ear plugs at Target. They had several different types. One was Mack’s Pillow Soft Original Silicone Putty Earplugs. I had read a mention of these in a review of the Nike ear plugs. So I decided to try them.
The Mack’s Pillow Soft Original Silicone Putty Earplugs are softer, and stickier. They seemed to seal better. Thought after using them a few times, they didn’t seem to seal as well. Unfortunately, the Mack’s Pillow Soft Original Silicone Putty Earplugs stuck to the little yellow instruction sheet that was in the plastic box. I ended up throwing them away since they had paper stuck to them.
I found that the local sporting good store did in fact still have the Nike Silicone Ear Plugs. They had just moved the swimming stuff back to a corner of the store. I bought some more of the Nike ear plugs. They seemed to be stiffer than the first ones I bought. And they aren’t seeming to seal well at all. So I have bought some more of the Mack’s ear plugs. I will try them again, and see how they work. I will throw away the little piece of paper this time though.
I have been reading book about the Total Immersion method of swimming. The overall goal of Total Immersion is to make people more efficient swimmers, thus faster. Part of figuring out how efficiently you are swimming is by counting how many strokes it takes you to get from one end of the pool to the other.
The first time I tried counting strokes, I started to swallow pool water, and came up coughing. Ack! I was still just starting to learn to swim at the time. Later I managed to estimate how many strokes I was taking by counting how many times I breathed. Since I was breathing every third stroke, I figured out I was taking close to 30 strokes to get across the 25 yard pool. That was pretty bad.
I have been working on making my swim stroke more efficient, and taking a little more glide, etc. I managed to get my strokes down to maybe 22-25. Still not good.
Yesterday I decided to work on reducing my strokes, and get better at counting strokes. I would push off the wall, and count hand entries. My first stroke was with my right hand. Since I was breathing every third stroke, I would breathe to the left on my third stroke. I figured out that I really only need to count by threes when I breathe. So I would breathe to the left on 3 strokes, right at 6 strokes, left at 9 strokes, right at 12 strokes, left at 15, and right at 18 strokes. I managed to get across the pool in about 17-21 strokes, with 18-19 strokes being the mean stroke count. I worked on my form, and counting. I swam slow, and easy not worrying about time at all. I would like to get a metronome to work on a nice even efficient stroke.
I took the day before and the day after Thanksgiving off from work. Plus I had Thanksgiving itself off. It was nice to be able to go the the swimming pool in the middle of the day. Well, mostly nice.
My goal was to swim one mile using only freestyle. What I have been doing was swimming one length freestyle, one length backstroke. My backstroke is slower than my freestyle. The longest I had swam usning only freestyle was about 15 minutes and 15 laps. So my goal was to swim one whole mile using all freestyle.
So I headed to the pool in the afternoon. It was pretty crowded with people swimming laps and kids. I managed to grab a lane, and start swimming. The crowd started thinning out. I was in the second from the end. Then some guy and his kids jumped in and parked themselves at the deep end of the pool in my lane. The end lane was empty, but they decided my lane was where they wanted to be. I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t the butt munch see I was using the lane to swim laps? The pool had a more empty lanes at this time. So I moved to another lane and continued my laps. Pretty soon one of the kids with the guy started to swim laps…not in the lanes, but ACROSS THE LANES! What kind of moron is this guy? Yeah, this was open swim, but geez, have some courtesy.
Then another lady was having her daughter swimming across the lanes at the shallow end. I came close to swimming over her.
Finally I managed to finish my 35 laps (one mile) in 44 minutes. I was forced to catch my breath between laps at the end of the pool. But 44 minutes was still faster than the 45-46 minutes I have been usually taking when swimming easy. I am going to try to work on swimming freestyle more regularly.
I had the day off from work. I thought if I went to the swimming pool in the middle of the day, it would not be very busy. But the pool was packed when I got there. There was one empty lane, so I headed for it. Just before I got, some little 9 year old got there and was about ready to jump in. Grrrr. Fortunatly his mom grabbed him and lead him to another lane. So I grabbed the lane. My plan was to swim long and easy, half freestyle, half backstroke. I swam, and people came and went. The lifeguards changed shifts, and I saw each a couple times. As more lanes freed up, I moved to an end lane. For some reason, there were lots of little kids there. Annoyingly, some of them wanted to play in the lap pool instead of the kiddie pool. So they were swimming around with their foam noodles. And some of the little kids were swimming in and out of my lane. I didn’t mind this while I was at the other end of the pool. But I did yell at a couple of little kids to get out of my lane, and they did. I didn’t particularly want to hit them as I was swimming backstroke.
I swam a total of 85 laps in 1:53 which is about 2.4 mile of the distance of the swim in an Ironman triathlon. This is the longest farthest I have swam. But not I know I can do it.
My shoulders are a little sore and tired, but overall, I feel good. I wolfed a Subway footlong sub afterwards.