NEed help getting back into swim of things..

My opinion - work on the technique first....the endurance and speed will come later. If you get the technique down now, you'll be further ahead in the long run! Good luck!

being a long distance swimmer myself (and working into doing triathlons) I'd say don't worry...

Every year, there are kids who over the summer don't practice, and it takes quite a bit to get them back into shape, even for them to "get into their groove" again -- that is, relearning their stroke.

Also, I'd suggest focusing more on freestyle than breaststroke.

But don't worry, it'll come back to you soon enough -- just keep practicing and everything will fall into place.

This user's post has been ignored.

This is a bit of an embarrassing story, but it seems appropriate to tell it here. I forgot I knew how to swim. I have no idea why I forgot this - maybe some near-drowning episode made me repress the memory. But at the age of 40 I signed up for "adult swim lessons" at the Y and told them I wanted to finally learn to do the front crawl, that I had tried and tried as a kid and never could get it.

So I got in the pool and tried a lap. I did a lovely job of it. Then I tried breast stroke. Yup, that was good. Then I tried several other strokes. Turns out I don't know the butterfly, but I can do lap after lap of all the other strokes.

It slowly came back to me as the swim teacher asked why I was there... I actually had taken Lifeguard training as a teen-ager. A week later I recalled that I swam in college (not competitively.) It had been literally twenty years since I attempted to swim (as far as I recall) but my body absolutely knew how.

Speed and endurance are still being built, but there's nothing terribly wrong with my technique.

So the moral of this story is, don't sweat six months.

And try not to drown, because it messes with your head.

Gwendal