Swim Workout #3

Grabbing my goggles, kickboard, and leg floats, I jumped in the pool at the Y tonight for my 3rd serious training swim. Tonight, I wanted to focus more on keeping track of my workout. I have not been well prepared for the swim training, and the plans I have set out for myself have not gone well.

I started with a 100m warm up. By switching between the crawl and the breaststroke every touch, I was able to make it without resting.

After the warm up, I worked on 25m stints practicing a different drill each time. I switched between kickboard, left arm crawls, and right arm crawls, and threw in some crawls with leg floats to practice breathing.

Definitely not earth shattering stuff, but I did see some improvement. Maybe not in overall length, I likely swam just about 500m total, but my technique seems to be coming along. I noticed that if I keep my ear in the water when I rotate to breath, I keep better form, and am able to get more air in between strokes. Plus, I worked on slowing down my stroke. I noticed that if I watch my arm when I rotate to breath, this actually slows my pace, and lowers my heart rate, which allows my to control my breathing better.

I end with a 100m cooldown, just the way I started. I say cooldown, but this is not true. The last few strokes coming to the wall at the end were arm burners.

Since I started the workout tonight in the wellness/weight room upstairs by doing lots of abdominal work, mixed with some chest, and arms exercises, I did not push the amount of swimming tonight. I was happy to just work on form, which is probably what I need to do most anyways.

On a side note, I think the swimming may be a cause for the lower heart rate during biking and running. Swimming kicks my butt and pushes me to VO2 Max (Maximum Oxygen Consumption) quickly, and as a side effect, I may be getting some payoff on the other discplines.

Next Goal: Swim 500m

Current Status: Loving the Dry Sauna at the Y (Nothing is better than 15 minutes of dry heat on sore, tired muscles. Oh Man! I gotta build one those at my house.)

Upcoming: 2 Loops at Sesqui