Group Swim Practice

Today is Friday, glorious REST day.  My muscles need the rest, I may try breaking out the P90X stretch video, and do some stretching today.  After all, flexibility is important for improving athletic performance.

Yesterday was a TNT group swim practice at Spring Hill RECenter, a fairfax county park facility.  Nice pool, but too many people.  There appeared to be 1 level 1 lane, 2 level 2 lanes, and 1 level 3 lane.  I'm not yet comfortable swimming with the 3's, so I stuck with the 2's.  Even among the level 2 lanes, one was faster than the other, but there were already 5 people in it, so I swam in the other level 2 lane which only had 2 people, which was also considerably slower.  Not the best workout since I've started training, but I think the end of the workout was telling of how far I've come along since I started swim training.  We had to do 1x200yrds and 1x300yrds.  I felt good swimming both lengths, back to back.  I lost count in the 1x300, and I actually think I ended up swimming 350yrds.  At the end of practice I asked the coach what she thought I could improve on, and the one piece of advise she had for me was lengthen my stroke.  She thinks my stroke pace is about 20 something strokes per lap, she says that the goal should be in the teens, and the way to get there is lengthening the stroke.  I'll get into the technicalities in another post.

Many I've spoken to about doing triathlons, always talk about swimming being a handicap.  Some didn't know how to swim which is understandable, but for others, they didn't have the endurance to do even 50 yrds.  To those I say, it's like any other training - whether your lifting weights, running, or even biking.  The first few weeks are going to be hard and discouraging, but with a little patience, a proper workout program, and commitment, anyone can improve their athletic performance.  I've been there, I was there five/six weeks ago.