Nov 15-Dec 15 "Swim Speed Secrets" Book Club (Page 12)

Feeling a little defeated and inspired, if that's possible

Those kids are amazing swimmers!  I used to go to the evening master's practice and the kids' swim team would be finishing up just before we were getting in -- some of those kids would be swimming sub-1:00 100's and look perfectly comfortable.  Just incredible....and, like you said, a tiny bit of that defeated feeling knowing I'll never be anywhere near that fast!  

Always fun doing a mix of bigger moderate intervals with shorter faster ones. Tonight was shorter rest on the faster ones. These aren't actually the hard part. It's trying to do that big one off the really short rest of the last short one. oof. Went from fast 100's to fast 50's and cut the send-off time in half.

I tried my new Stretchcordz for the first time this morning.  I didn't do a whole lot - the total elapsed time from when I went down to the basement until I came back up was probably 10 mins tops.  Holy smokes, I think I'm going to feel that later on!

I'm going to try to rig up a bench of some sort to use rather than standing bent over.

One time, we did a set of 100's on 1:30 one day....and a few sets later, our coach had us do 50's on 0:45.  I was like, "Piece of cake....the 100's went well, so the 50's should be fine -- they're shorter after all!"  Boy did I realize just how wrong I was!  

Swim this morning was a mix of awful and decent.  Ambient temps in the low 40's, pool wasn't very warm (they started heating it in the middle of the warm-up, but the heat comes from both ends, so the middle stays cold for a while), and I damn near gave up after doing a set of 8x100 on a reasonably slow interval and not getting a ton of rest.  As the swim went on, it definitely got better, but I seriously considered bailing about 1300 in!  Managed 4100 this morning in the end and felt much better by about 2500.  Sometimes I guess it just takes a long time to warm up!

It's amazing, huh?  My 11 YO swam 1:13 for the 100 free this weekend, which knocked 20 seconds of her PR from last March.  I don't think I could swim that fast with fins on.

I've been focusing on keeping my elbows high during the catch and feeling the water on my forearms and palms.  When I jumped in for the warmup this morning, my lats were sore -- I'm going to take that as a good sign that I'm having some success keeping my elbows up.

I was also able to find someone with a GoPro underwater camera who's willing to let me borrow it.  One of my master's coaches and I are going to get some video shortly so I can actually see what I'm doing.  Looking forward to it (I think....she says with trepidation!). 

Actually survived 750 yds of kicking at masters yesterday. And did it on the intervals with the guys I normally swim with, ~1:05/50 for this. Lots of kicking did help to get better at that. Now to keep developing the range of motion out front to be able to hold that downward feeling more. Don't have the range of motion to make a straight out extension be easy for deep into a swim.

To put that in context, my 100M kick times are like 3:30 - 3:45.  I think I can actually go backwards kicking if I try. 

that just made me laugh. Sorry

Done. Need to adjust to get the timing of each section right, but got through it. Didn't feel as long as it was with the switching it up every 1k.

Hey, Ben.  What type of snorkel do you use for this?  I'm fiddling with a regular swim snorkel and it kind of gets on my nerves a bit.  Thanks!

I have a Finis, but didn't use it. Just swam with or without the buoy as stated.

 I just got the Finis Swimmers Snorkel - Adult (they make a junior size too so make sure to check) for about $30.    I used it for the first time on Saturday and gotta say I loved working with it.  Was able to totally focus on the catch and pull and I think it'll really help me out a lot.