Tonight was a swim night, 2000 yards and I was swimming like crap tonight. I don't know if it's because of my allergies which have had me stuffed up for the last 2 days or if it's because the water in the pool was always flowing in the opposite direction I was swimming or what, but something was up and I couldn't swim normally like I usually do.
I was swimming tonight as poorly as I was on Sunday in the freezing waters of Lake Del Valle and that was getting me down. How am I supposed to swim 1.5 km in the ocean if I can't even swim 100 yards in a 5ft. deep pool?? I guess I just need to practice and remember all the things I have been taught so far like relaxing, focusing on having good form and pulling all the way through my stoke. I was feeling very "sink-y" and I was hyper-aware of all the drag my body was creating which of course makes it very hard to swim. I was trying to 'push' my upper body down so it would level out with my lower body but all I was doing was keeping my head too low in the water so every time I went to breathe, I got a lot of water in my mouth :( bleh.
The warm up was 200 LVL2, 50 kick and then 10 x 25 LVL6. After that, the main work out was (200 LVL6, 2 x 50 LVL8) x 3 and then a 400 (broken down into 100 LVL2, 200 LVL6, 100 LVL2). I couldn't hardly do the 100's at a LVL2 and I had to break the 200's down into several sections :(
What I learned tonight is that I am only a good short distance swimmer. The 50's at a high level of exertion are easy for me, I just think 1, 2, 3, breathe, 1, 2, 3, breathe, etc... Anything over 4 laps in the pool left me gasping for air which I think is because I'm too novice a swimmer to know how to differenciate my swimming exertion levels. Basically, when the instructions say LVL 3, I am probably swimming at a LVL 5 and when they say to do a LVL 6 I'm doing LVL 8 and that's why I come up short and gasping for air every time. I need to work on that.
Or it could be because I'm under-fueled. I didn't have anything to eat between lunch and swimming... I need to look into that.
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Where is your fuel gel????
ReplyDeleteHey there Jan. Don't get down on yourself, you are doing SO great! I had the same problem that you are talking about when I was training at Davis. My swim coach said that I was a great sprint swimmer but that I only had one speed which prevented me from going long distances. She had me do 50 yd. segments in which I had to go as slow as I could with out sinking. It forced my body to creat a new pace that it had not done before. From there I was able to increase speed and only swim at the rate that I wanted instead of sprinting. Keep up the great work! I am sure you will figure it out and come May 1.5km will be nothing.
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