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Friday 2 February 2007

Swimming pool revelations

Major breakthrough this morning. I cycled to the pool not really looking forward to swimming, and not up for a big workout. So I decided to work on my technique. So up and down with kickboard and then pullbouy. I then did 400m swim in 8 min and 12 secs, very slow, bit disappointing. Then I just happened to try breathing either side every 3 strokes. It felt very awkward for a few lengths, didn't get the timing and not always remembered to breathe to the left( I breather to the right normally). So then I decided to swim just breathing to the left. I kept it going for 2 lengths at a time and rested between each 2. I thought I'll time this and see. So I did a length of to the right and a length of to the left. Felt loads slower to the left, but to my absolute amazement, I was 3 seconds quicker per length breathing to the left! I thought this can't be right, and I tried it over a few lengths of each, and it was consistently the same!
I think what it is doing is forcing me to rotate more to my weaker side and hence is propelling me through the water better. I shall have to try this again and practice to get used to breathing to the left. But if this theory is proven to be right, then I'm looking at shaving nearly a minute off my 400m time in the pool, and could bring my swim time for Half Ironman down considerably. It's got me excited about swimming again!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is it a lot of trial and error - it is amazing that you appear to have made such an improvement with just a breathing adjustment - hope it continues to prove effective for you.

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