Saturday morning's extended swim and thoughts on technique
Mimi gave us a great "see what you're made of" set today. We started swimming as long a distance as we could for 3:30. The next was on 3:25, then 3:20, and so on, down to 1:15. When you couldn't make the interval, you knocked a 50 from your distance. Everyone was doing them freestyle except Yours Truly, who had the honor of doing them all IM. Seriously, it could have been much worse. The nice thing about 200 IMs is that after a while they stop hurting and you just go numb.
I made about eight or nine 200 IMs before I kicked them down to fly/back/breast. Doing that, I made it down to about 2:15 before I started with the 100 IMs, which I did until we got to 1:25. I finished up the last two with a 50 fly and a 50 back.
Honestly I think I could have swum the workout harder, but I was still so sore from circuit training two days ago that I didn't want to push it too hard and hurt myself. I had also been up for 21 hours at that point, so I surely wasn't going to perform at my best.
Today's stroke ideas:
Backstroke -- relax the hands - reject Ze Claw! You don't need the claw to get a good catch when you roll your hips and shoulders enough and really stretch out your arm on entry. Saw improved stroke rate when doing this as well. And for the love, keep your head still!
Freestyle -- again, roll the hips. This gives you the power you need in the catch and pull so you don't have to do out searching in the periphery of the periphery with that right arm. Perfect that elbow bend through proper rotation.
Breaststroke -- well, shit, I just don't have enough time to spend in the water to strengthen up my adductors to the point where they can take that wide, powerful whip kick. Without that, my breaststroke is very lackluster. I will not be able to rely on it in the meet next month to be in a wide lead going into the freestyle. Looking back, a fitting motto for my glory days would have been "Better IMs through breaststroke domination," but now it looks like I'm a jack of all trades -- and a master of none.