I went swimming this morning, and I felt like quitting for the whole first half mile.  Some things are becoming consistent; my first IM time, 2:40.59, being just a second or so slower than my last IM time Tuesday.  But I was so tired afterwards, that I didn’t push myself hard on my second IM, coming in at 2:46.63.

Imagine running while holding your breath and someone’s throwing water in your face.  Oh yeah, and you’re wearing body weights.  That’s kinda the sensation of a swim workout.  It just took so long for the adrenaline to kick in!

Then I looked up, and I’d swum 900 yards.  I was halfway done.  I could do this!  I put my head down and got it done.  I even managed a few flip turns for the first time since attaining the mile.

It felt like I’d been in the pool forever.  I didn’t look at my watch when I first entered the pool, but it was 5:48 AM when I reached the deep end after my first 25.  I finished at 7 AM.

Lessons from the freestyle:  This is such a coordination stroke.  You’re doing rhythmic breathing, you’re kicking, pulling your arms.  It all has to syncronize in order to work.

I did some drills today to get through it.  When it’s all said and done, I swim 550 yards of freestyle in my set.  I’d like those yards to be as effortless as possible.  The drill I did today was to roll all the way over on my side while breathing, and glide a little from that position, taking a long breath or two.  I tried kicking while on my side, and found myself more tired, even though I’d taken in more air.  So I tried to coordinate the kicking so I’d basically stop kicking while I was breathing.  This felt a little awkward, but it was less tiring.

I tried to pysche myself into being excited about swimming freestyle, rather than the usual dread.  by the time I swam my last freestyle length, I wasn’t exactly happy to be swimming it, but I did almost look forward to it.

I noticed that my backstroke was inconsistent today.  I count my strokes–that’s every time my arms move through the water.  I used to consistently get to the final flags after 18 strokes.  Lately, I’ve worked my way down to 16 strokes.  But today, I was all over the place–sometimes 16, sometimes 19.  It all pointed to fatigue.  I also swim 550 yards of backstroke in a set.

Usually, I feel fine aerobically swimming breast stroke.  It’s just easier to breathe and swim breast stroke than freestyle.  What usually happens is my knee gets a chink doing that frog kick for an extended period of time.  I’ve done 450 yards of breast stroke by the end of a set.  Today, that was pain free.  Score!

Next time I’ll talk about butterfly and elementary back stroke, and I’ll go into detail about the IM.