Evil, evil catch-up!

I cannot say it was exactly a blissful swim, nor was it as long as I would like, but it was certainly a very enjoyable and productive one.

I did the warm-up: 4 x 175 (125 free, 50 IM order kick-swim).

Flip turns coming along: I seem to stall once I've tucked and turned, I am still not doing it right, but I am no longer coming down deeply and steeply off the wall, and occasionally I get a glimpse of how it might be in future...

Then I got started on the first set, still doing flip turns & accordingly not really worrying too much about speed. 12 x 75 free, ascending [Ed. That should obviously be descending! But obviously the casual association is that as one is going faster one should be going up rather than down!] by threes (first three smooth, second three medium, etc.).

Around #8 Coach Henning stopped me & made the exact same observation that the substitute coach made on Saturday: my right arm looks good on high-elbow and entry and catch, but the left arm (this is my phrasing obviously, not theirs!) is slightly awful, very straight and windmillish and smacking/flopping back down into the water instead of having high elbow and proper entry and decent catch. He recommended that I do my last four 75s as right-arm, left-arm, full catch-up.

So I did, and it was evilly and wonderfully beneficial...

I only had time after that to do a few hundreds of drill-swim. Say 3 x 100, first as zipper-with-salute, swim by 25, second and third with right-arm, left-arm, full catch-up as before plus one length swim concentrating on technique. It felt a lot better, but I know it falls apart once I am actually swimming for real! Then 50 swim concentrating on form.

(It is possible that these two coaches both independently noticed the wayward left arm because in the last few months a lot of other things about my swimming have had steady improvement, namely body rotation, so that this is more striking. It is more likely, though, that doing flip turns basically just makes my stroke go all to hell!)

(Quote of the day from Coach Henning: "The drill that we most hate is usually the drill we most need to do!")

(Yesterday's quote of the day, from M., who was somewhat laughing at me as I did my squat-with-various-upper-body things on the Bosu ball: "You've got your serious face on!" And I did, it was fairly ridiculous, I could see in the mirror that I looked like I was pondering the fate of the universe--in fact I was contemplating the undoubted need for great mental focus in the inevitable less pleasant stretches of Florida 70.3!)

Total (hmmm, not very high, but they were quality yards): 1950 yards