I KNOW, i know i know i know. I have said this a million times. But this time I am for real:
I am going to seriously buckle down in the pool. Like seriously actually swim hard. And then I will get fast!
There are several factors at play here:
1. I am NOT going to use the pull buoy as a crutch ANY MORE. I looked back over my workouts from the summer, and only about 25-30% of my main sets were just plain swimming! The rest I did with the pull buoy, paddles, fins, snorkel… Yikes! No more cheating. And for my past two workouts, I have not used the pull buoy at all - my back is so sore, even though I only did 2000 yards today!
2. I got a swim coach!!!!!! So excited. More on that later… I am doing a swim test on Friday. Maybe after that point I won’t be as excited 
, but I doubt it.
Today, the glorious 25 meter outdoor pool here in Incline switched to a significantly reduced lap-swim schedule, one that basically prevents any working stiffs (even ipart-timers like me) from swimming there. So, it’s back to the stuffy 25 yard indoor pool at the Rec Center. Bleh. Although, after only one workout, I noticed that I am a bit more likely to stay focussed there. Mostly because the clock is a digital one, whereas the one at the outdoor pool is an old-style one and half the time they forget to put it out, so it was easy for me to be all “oh I’ll just stand here and rest for a while, and maybe a while longer.” Also, the water at the indoor pool is a lot clearer, the walls are less slippery, and the lanes are wider, so even though the water is a high 84 degrees and the air is poorly ventilated, the switch indoors isn’t entirely bad.
Comments
This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 9:49 pm and is filed under enjoy the blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hi Courtenay - thanks for saying hello
Love the webpage - your site is very fun. Congrats on your stellar 5430 performance and what looks like an incredible season!!
I love love love Incline Village - what a beautiful place to train you have!
Did you get a swim coach or a full blown triathlon coach? Both would probably be great. For me having a swim coach helped me tremendously. I took 3 minutes off my swim over the course of a year after taking almost 2 off the year prior (with a lot less time in the pool because I wasn’t willing to put in the time…) It is almost solely because of having a good swim coach and hitting the pool 4-6 times a week 2000-4000 meters at a time and swimming hard or working on technique when I was there. Never swimming just to swim.
I spent my first several years in triathlon saying over and over that I was going to get better at swimming, but I just went to the pool and went through the motions and never really swam hard and never learned to swim correctly and didn’t improve much until I did. (From 2002 did 31 mins for 1500 to 2006 did 27 mins, got coaching at masters from awesome coach but only swam 1-3 times a week-did just over 25 mins in 2007, continued with same coach but swam 4-6 times a week and did 22:20 this year so far).
Sorry to write a book, I just hate to see someone with so much talent make the same mistakes that I did.
I keep meaning to email you my thoughts on your stroke. I can’t wait to see what you can do. But then I’m like, it’s the one thing I can beat you at. NOw you’re going to get all fast and stuff. Damn!