A friend of mine wanted a base time. There’s a base time. Slow as mud. I am getting better. Keep in mind I am just starting to really learn how to swim. I never swam as a kid due to ear problems. I took four swimming lessons in June, one of which was a waste with two teenage girl lifeguards that were subbing for the teenage kid who was the regular teacher. At least the girls were cute.
But I swam 1000 yards (40 lengths in a 25 yard pool) today after work. I was able to swim 50 yards at a time instead of 25 yards at a time before stopping to catch my breath. And today I wasn’t as out of breath between laps. I mostly did front crawl, with a little bit of breast stroke.
I am hoping to swim 3 times a week til I get it down. It’s definatly my weakness. And I probably wont be able to wear a wet suit in Louisville.
Are there like neoprene jammers? Would they be legal in warmer water, and would they give much floatation?
With the Louisville Ironman about a year away, I need to get serious about swimming. I have cycled 100 miles, and run multiple marathons. But swimming is my weak point.
Tonight my wife and I headed to the pool. I managed to swim 17 laps which almost half a mile. Actually 17.5 laps would have been about a mile. So I was close. Anyway, I swam it 25 yards at a time. I was actually getting a little smoother towards the end.
I need to get different goggles. I have some Speedo goggles that seal really nicely. But when my head is in the water, I see the bottom in a double vision that is sort of disorienting. They also have blue lenses. I have heard that I will want clear lenses for the river at the Louisville Ironman. My clear lens Tyr goggles just dont seal well.
I was swimming okay. I swam most of it doing the front crawl, but I swam a couple laps using a breast stroke. I probably could have gone a little farther, but I had pulled out my ear plug to talk to my wife, and with my ear a little wet, it wasn’t sealing very well. This was the farthest I have ever swam.
I want to get an MP3 player designed for swimming. I think that would encourage me to stay in the pool longer. I need to work up to where I can swim more continuously. I will get there! I am going to try to swim two or three times a week.
I had the last of my swim lessons last night. I have basically had private swim lessons almost all the way through. There was one lady who showed up the first week for a bit, and then left. After that it was just me.
I am definately feeling mroe comfortable in the water, but I still have a long way to go. I work exclusively on the front crawl last night. I learned a few things. Alot of what I learned, I actually figured out myself. I have found it easier to breathe on my left side than my right side. I figured out why last night. I breathe on the left side as my left arm is back and just about ready to come out of the water. I have been breathing on the right side after the arm is already out of the water. So I focused on taking a breath on the right side slightly earlier, and that helped. I also noticed I am turning my head slightly differently on the right side, and I still need to work on that.
I worked on breathing every three strokes. I start off relaxed, and towards the end of two laps, I am starting to breathe harder, and my strokes start getting a little more frantic to reach the end of the pool. And as my strokes become more frantic, I start breathing faster… It is a downward spiral. I think this will improve as my swimming endurance improves, and I get the timing of breathing down better. Then I can relax more.
I didn’t experience any dizziness last night. I used some ear plugs made by Nike. They are these little sticky balls. I rolled them in my hands, and shoved them in my ears. The left one worked great. I kept taking the right one out to listen to the instructions of the teacher. After a while, it wasn’t sticking as well as my ear was wet. But they seemed to work.
I plan to try to get to the pool a couple times a week to swim laps and hopefully become more relaxed and comfortable doing it. They have lap swims from 6-8am. So I might be able to get in there before work.
Last night I had my 3rd swimming lesson. I am slowly getting better. I have been taking coaching tips and combining them with stuff from Terry Laughlin’s books & videos (the Total Immersion stuff). I found that when I had my head all the way down in the water, my legs came up. I was more balanced, and I seemed to move faster through the water with less effort. Very cool.
But I also found myself last night, getting dizzy and nauseous at points. At one point I got out of the pool and felt like I might throw up. The room seemed to be moving, and I got a headache for a while.
When I got home, I was scheduled to run for an hour. But my stomach was upset. Not enough to keep me from eating, but enough that I didn’t want to be bouncing up and down on a treadmill. I skipped my run and will do it tonight.
I have a history of getting sea sick on boats in rough water. So maybe that is what is going on. But I didn’t seem to have the same problems when swimming before. Well except when I tried swimming on my back, such as a back float, or backstroke. I ate dinner before I went to swim lessons. Maybe that had something to do with it. What I think is the most likely cause is water getting into my ears. I think when I did the back float stuff, and when I swim doing the front crawl with my head deeper in the water, I am getting water in my ears. And I think that is messing with my equalibrium. I bought ear plugs, so I will try those. I am planning on going swimming tomorrow night, or maybe this weekend. My wife suggested that she would come with me to swim laps.
I must say it’s a little wierd being a 44 year old athlete, and being taught swimming by high school kids. But what the hey. The regular teacher was not there last night. He had told me last week he would be there, but told me someone would be.
I got to the pool a little early and was relaxing in the hot tub. A cute girl named Emily asked if I was the student, and I said yeah. She asked me what I wanted to learn and I told her my goal of swimming in an Ironman. She had me get in the pool and show her what I knew. I swam clumsily across the pool. She commented that I wasn’t as bad as she was expecting.
Another girl named Marissa who apparently is another life guard joined in. Soon they were tag-teaming trying to teach me stuff. The lesson unfortunatly was disorganized. I don’t really know what I need to know, so they were trying to teach me everything they could thing of.
I did learn some stuff. I learned that if I try to float or swim on my back, it totally messed up on my equilibrium and I get dizzy, and even a little nausious. So much for the back float. They worked on trying to teach me the breast stroke. I couldn’t seem to get the whip kick part right though. They also touched on the modified side stroke. Emily did give me a few tips on my front crawl though, such as lifting my elbow out of the water in the back, and where to breathe. She also had me try swimming with a snorkle. This did not work out so well. I have snorkled around in the Caribbean. But I think the difference was I had a mask covering my nose. That’s another thing. I want to get a nose plug. I keep getting water in my nose when I swim.
There were points where I was feeling more comfortable in the water while doing a front crawl. I was working on relaxing, and stretching out my stroke to make it longer.
When the hour was done, I showered, changed, and headed home for my 5 mile run.
The lesson was probably not as productive as it could have been. But the girls were very nice. I’ll get this stuff down eventually.