Sunday, February 22, 2009

Baby steps.


A few small milestones:

-tonight the masters coach a) told me I had a great fly, and b) gave me a simple way to improve it: apparently it's not necessary for me to haul my entire chest out of the water when I breathe! I hadn't even realized I was going that, but the next lap of it that I did sure as hell felt instantly easier.

-I've dropped my stroke count on 25 yards from 20/21 a few months ago to 16/17.

-we did a breathing set at the end of practice tonight, and I didn't even feel out of breath when I finished the underwater 25. Then we were to do a 50 free on 3 breaths, and I did the first 25 without any, and only took 2 on the back end.

-oh, and I still don't have any abs, but I haven't given up hope that they'll eventually show up... and in the mean time, I am kind of frickin' stoked about my arms.

Next goals:

-get strong enough to do 50 fly without feeling like I'm going to collapse

-drop stroke count even more

-drop my intervals

-tighten up my turns

-do a timed mile, straight through. I have been avoiding this, because I'm vaguely nervous that being able to swim for two hours with breaks won't translate into being able to swim for half an hour without stopping, but I really ought to try it just to set a baseline and see where I'm at.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Hundreds and Hundreds

At masters this morning, we had a set of 10 x 100, odds fast with an out of water start (off the deck not the blocks) evens recovery. 
My times were:
1 - 1:05
3 - 1:05
5 - 1:06
7 - 1:08 (oops!)
9 - 1:06

So, not that bad. I felt pretty good until number 7, at which point the piano fell. Hard. I was able to pull it together again for number 9, although I had gotten to the point where I could no longer really feel my arms. I was just trusting that they were doing what I told them to, and I'm pretty sure I was flailing.    

If only I could hold that pace for 4.4 miles!!  

So, things to work on - holding a faster pace for longer distances. Not losing technique as I get tired. And ramping up the yardage. 
I'm aiming to do a T-30 this weekend. Any bets on whether I lose track of my laps? Ok, that's not a fair bet. Any bets on how far into the 30 minutes I lose track of my laps?


Thursday, February 5, 2009

dude.


aren't you going to NEED those lungs?