Swim breakthroughs

the two biggest speed gains i got were from upping my stroke rate a bit (this got me 3-5 sec per 100 right there).

and putting a little bit more force behind my hand entry. i suddenly started moving forward a bit faster before i even started pulling.

oh yeah, and get in the pool more thna 3x a week. that was by far the single biggest factor. when i upped my swim time from 8k a week to 14-18k, i dropped 13 sec off my oly race pace per 100.

I'm still a turtle in the water, but I had a recent breakthru.

I started following the free HIM training plan on this website. I started at week 12 because my HIM is at the end of October. After less than 3 weeks of increased swimming (which included my first 2+mile swim), I knocked 1:25 off my 750m swim time. If my calculations are correct, that's 11.3 seconds faster per 100m.  I finally broke the 2min/100m average. Not only that, I did the 750m course as a warmup, and my warmup time was faster than the previous month's race time.

The actions in training:
1) Swim more often per week. I think I swam 4 days in a row.
2) Swim farther. In my longest workout, I did 1800m non-stop.
3) Relax more. The less effort I put in, the faster overall I would go.

The results at the race:
1) I never even came close to maxing out my heartrate. That was killing me in the previous races.
2) I had more energy coming out of the water. Had my fastest run at that race, too.
3) My pace went from 2:10/100m to 1:58.8/100m.

I'm doing an Oly Tri in just over 2 weeks, and I'm totally jazzed about the swim. Like I said, I'm still more of a turtle in the water than a dolphin, but that is still a big deal for me.

Fantastic response. I have been contemplating the benefits of this type of thing for a while.

LOL...does putting my face in the water count? Oh and noseclips...those helped a lot!