Lap Lap Paradise...

I discovered I could not do swimming drills in open water as it becomes really disorienting with the waves that I cannot really feel if I'm swimming right or not, so back on the super cranberry pills I go and jumping back into the pool for drills!  So far it seems to be working, but maybe only once or twice a week since it itches my skin very badly ;_;

I definitely feel less tired flailing around, but my stoke rate has gone down and economy is up, and that is continuing.  I put my wetsuit on for the first time in two weeks (I was swimming with just a swimsuit for a bit since it was warm) and I swam the farthest so far 1.28 miles and at 2:55minutes/100yards.  My fastest time in open water thusfar, but still horrifyingly SLOW. Some glimmering moments in the water I would feel like I'm going really fast, but those are fleeting moments.

I decided to check out how I did in my FIRST triathlon back in 2009.  I still remember the swim portion.  The last event (it was a reverse tri). Just me, and this lady backstroking down the first 50 meter stretch of a 150 meter swim.  I knew I had to beat her. I can't really tell if I could tell if I was going fast or slow, but I caught up and finished (barely) before her.  My time for at 150 meter swim was 6:52  (FYI, I finished behind six hundred and fifty some people... there were less than ten competitors with slower times than me.  Oh MAN!)

I still can't convert swim pace in my head with ease, so I plugged in my time... and discovered I was swimming 4:11min/100 yards, in a pool!  In a pool I can swim 2:30 now.  Jesus, what was I doing, running these?  How not aerodynamic was I back then? (okay, I was thirty some pounds heavier :p ) 

Total Immersion Swimming Book

Decided to go back to square one, and the swimming pool, to do some drills from the Total Immersion Swimming book.  Unfortunately my skin and I disagreed about the chlorine in the pool after the second pool visit, and I'm sitting here drinking monumental amounts of cranberry juice (and missing some nice 4th of July fireworks since I'm not feeling well) as I write this.

Even from the two sessions I feel like I'm starting to learn how to swim and balance better, but I need at least a couple more hours of drilling to get it down to be able to use it without thinking about it so hard (because I will have other things to worry about in open water than just stroke mechanics!)  Since I can't keep swimming in chlorine, I'm going to have to hope for really calm conditions when I practice drills at Corona Del Mar (inconvenient since I cannot review the drills pages after a couple of laps) and also for the lack of walls indicating how long I've gone.  So my best bet, really, is to either swim really close to shore, or in between buoys. 

The drills break down when each body movement is supposed to occur, and reinforces it with repetition.  I like this much better than me just going "DAAAAA!" and spinning my gears really fast and tiring myself out in a couple of minutes.  Also it appears my head has been WAAAY to high up in the water.  I'm actually supposed to be sinking that sucker in and hiding it by tucking it a bit, leaning on my lungs or "buoy" so that naturally my hip raises and I'm "swimming downhill". 

Looks like it's Corona Del Mar and some drill work (about half an hour) plus maybe a small inside lap for me tomorrow!