Saturday afternoon swimming

I am the village idiot of all swimmers!

I had a blinding revelation concerning flip turns today, something that actually the coach was trying to explain to me yesterday and that probably would have been clear to anyone reading here as I talked the other week about feeling like lungs would explode as I popped up like a cork, except they would have thought it would have been so obvious to me also that they would not have bothered to say it!

I was kind of nodding my head to the coach yesterday while not really listening (hmmm, perhaps the phrase in question was something along the lines of "I am not really a science guy, but the water is denser deeper down"!), I expect it is just too many things to think about at once, I was concentrating on mentally gearing up for another stab at the evil thing--but I suddenly realized this afternoon that of course my lungs feel like they are going to explode since I keep coming off the wall strongly downwards rather than perpendicular near the surface of the water or upwards--it is a question of underwater pressure, not of breathing issues!

Let us say that I go four or maybe even five feet down instead of staying close to the surface--it is hardly surprising that buoyancy should be strongly making me pop up as I feel increasingly like my lungs will explode!

I felt better about the whole business after this insight, but there is no doubt the next few weeks of swimming will not be nearly as enjoyable as usual. Hmmm, much doggedness required for all swimming-related pursuits--I really will just have to do those turns on all my freestyle bits, even at temporary cost of technique, comfort and speed--doing them just on warmup lengths is not enough, you have do a lot of something before it starts working right...

(Taking a glass-half-full approach, I will note that it is very striking that whereas usually I look forward to the freestyle segments and feel mildly incompetent on the stroke bits, today it was certainly the other way round, doing very bad flip turns erodes my feeling of competence and the stroke bits seemed like a total reprieve!)

No coach again--I think there may be a bit of an issue over spring break. But one of the other swimmers wrote up a workout we had earlier this semester.

Warmup: 200 free, 200 IM drill-stroke by 25, 200 free, 200 back

Workout (truncated):

300 free, 3 x 100 free, 3 x 50 stroke IM order, 50 easy
200 free, 2 x 100 IM, 3 x 50 stroke, 50 easy
100 free, 1 x 100 IM, 3 x 50 stroke, 50 easy

2600 yards total