T -205 - Swim - Wednesday 6th August

First swim for over two weeks and it was noticeable that my performance and stroke had degraded :)

Whilst I was England i picked up a book called Total Immersion - which is referenced by most triathlon books and has formed the basis of a lot of drills that I've done over the years. So I've been reading it and trying to take on board some of the ideas to improve my stroke.

http://www.totalimmersion.net/

The basic idea is swim like a fish through a small hole in the water and use as little energy as possible. The drills today focused on back work and getting balance right in the water. very frustrating if you have no fat in your legs - so I used fins to give myself a bit of forward motion.

After the drills the first part of my main set felt as if I was swimming through thin water. :)

Goggles were a pain for a bit and the security gaurd wasn't happy with me being there. I also bought a pair of fins whilst in England and they were good for the kick set but I did start getting some cramping problems with them which carried on into my cool down - this is the answer http://erikalilley.blogspot.com/2007/09/leg-cramps-while-swimming.html

More calf stretching and ankle stretching. :) How I am suffering for not stretching for a couple of weeks.? Especialy sitting back on my ankles and doing claf raises on the steps.

So I did:

300m warm up 25,50,75,75,50,25
8x25m drills - back,left,right,active balance drills from lesson 1 in TI
4x100m (though 1st 100m was really 2x50m due to goggles)
8x25 kick set with fins 2xfront, 3xleft, 3xback
300m cool down 25,50,75,75,25 - the last 50 were canned because of the cramp