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.
With my goal of dong an Ironman, I decided I need to learn to swim better. I am a lousy swimmer. So I signed up for adult swimming lessons at the local community center. I have been excitedly waiting for them to start.
Tonight was my first lesson. It was scheduled to start at 7:30pm. I arrived a little after 7, checked in at the front desk and headed to the locker room. I bought a combination padlock this afternoon in anticipation of using a locker. I debated about a combination lock or key lock. With a key lock I would have to carry a key, but with a combo lock, I would need to remember a combination. Well, I went with the combination lock. Anyway, I found a locker, changed into my new Sugoi swimsuit. I spent a few minutes adjusting the straps on my new TYR swim goggles.
I took a quick shower and headed out to the pool. There was a lady teaching some kids swimming lessons. She asked me what I wanted and I told her I was there for the adult swimming lessons. She said I was early and the guy would be there at 7:30. I sat around for a few minutes, then got into the hot tub. I waited in the hot tub till the teacher shower up. The swim teacher was a kid. A high school junior. Thats fine. I am sure he is a better swimmer than me. It wouldn’t be hard.
He asked me some questions, then had me get into the pool to see what I could do. I swam across the pool with a breast stroke. Then I swam back using a crawl stroke. He had me working on keeping my legs straight. He had me holding to the side of the pool kicking. And then breathing. Then he had me swim across the pool using a Pull Buoy. Then he had me going across the pool using the pull buoy and a kick board. Then I used then the kick board.
About this time the single other student showed up. A woman. The teacher kid alternated working with her and me. I was swimming laps doing crawl stroke working on keeping my legs straight and breathing, I need to remember 3 strokes and breathe. After a little while the left, and it was just me. I could swim across the 25 yard pool and I would be left gasping for breath. Then he had me treading water for a couple minutes.
Towards the end of the class, the kid was trying to get me to float. But I don’t float. My bodt fat percentage is low enough, that I sink pretty easily. It got to be 8:30 and I was done. I was tired. Yeah, I run marathons, and bike for 100 miles, but I am not used to swimming. So my heart was cranked after each lap. I am going to have to check into when they hold lap swims. I have to figure out if I should show up and do some laps between lessons or if I should just wait till I finish my lessons. I’d hate to practice poor form. But at least I could be building up he swimming muscles.
I am starting my swim lessons in about 3 weeks. After which I am going to try to get into a habit of swimming laps a couple times a week to build my swimming skills and endurance. With my goal of doing an Ironman triathlon next year, I need to be able to swim 2.4 miles. According to the website, the lap swimming part of the pool is 25 yards long. I looked it up and found that I will have to swim 35.2 laps to have swum (swimmed?) a mile. So 2.4 miles would be about 85 laps. There is no way that I would able to keep track of counting those those laps in my head. I decided to by a watch with a counter. What better kind of watch to get for doing Irorman training than a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch? 
I started search the web and found there area bunch of different models. Men’s and women’s styles. 8 laps, 30 laps, 42 laps, 100 laps, etc. There are even models with heart rate monitors and GPS’s! I decided that I wanted a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch that would count up to 100 laps. I figured that would work when I try to swim 2.4 miles in the pool.
Even among the 100 lap models, there were still a variety of styles. As far as reviews about the quality of the watches, pretty much all of the reviews were postive. So I wasn’t too concerned about the quality of any of Timex Ironman triathlon watches. So it came down to style. I wanted a watch that said Ironman Triathlon! I wanted a reminder of what I will be training for.
All of the models had Ironman Triathlon on the face. Some of the models had a simple M-Dot logo on the side. I found one model that actually says Ironman triathlon on the band. It looked really cool. And the reviews were good. That was the one I wanted. I found it on amazon for about $45 plus shipping. I walked over to target, and found a couple 30-lap models on sale for $30. They also had a 100-lap model for $50. But it wasn’t the one I wanted. I searched Walmart’s website and found the watch I wanted for $46. So last night after karate clas, I hit Walmart. They had a small handfull of Timex Ironman watches. I found a 100 lap model that looked different than the one I wanted, but it was only $44. It said Ironman Triathlon of the side and was waterproof to 100 meters. Perfect for swimming and counting my laps. When I got it home, I read through the instructions which are in a dozen languages and kind of hard to follow. I managed to set the time and play with the lap timing stuff. It will work great. After comparing it to the picture of the watch I wanted, I relized it was in fact the same watch. I just looked brighter in the pictures on the net or something. It is a cool watch though!
This is the watch I bought: Timex 100-Lap Ironman Triathlon 66801.
