I caught James' stomach flu full force yesterday. Not pretty. Not fun. Almost all better today. Better enough to attend my second swim lesson and swim .85 miles over 1.75 hours (.48 mi/hr average). I wore my sexy, hot pink swimsuit. One lap showed me this suit had much less drag but the same baggy problem as my last one :( I ended up knotting the shoulder straps just to keep it from falling off. Ugh.
I also tried all the strokes I remembered from junior high (breast stroke, freestyle, backstroke, sidestroke) and discovered that freestyle is definitely the toughest for me. Maybe it's the only one I'm doing right ;) Anyway, that boosted my confidence a little.
The sleeker swim suit instantly improved my flip turn, too. Much less drowning this time.
Once I got the flip turn basics, my swim teacher asked me to do as many laps as I could without a rest. Um, well, my first attempt was a whopping 1.5 laps. By the end, I could just barely get to 2 laps (50 yards), then had to stop and suck in oxygen for a couple minutes.
So, it's hard, but I'm not discouraged. I'm really pleased that I had the energy to swim almost an hour straight with short breathing breaks between (30sec-2min). I'm glad to be pushing my limit.
The swimsuit issue makes me rethink the kids' bathing suits for their swim lessons, too. Robert, in particular, wears those ridiculous baggy, knee-length shorts and a short-sleeved rashguard. I wonder if I could get him to try something sleeker. Would he even put it on? Worst case scenario: he hates it and I just try it on James and Matthew when they get older :)
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Yay I'm so glad you're drowning less! Oh man,I wonder how far I could go without a rest these days. Probably not far! We swam 50 yard laps when I was a Kingman Dolphin. So pretty much every drill was in multiples of 100, because that way the coach doesn't have to walk to the other end of the pool all the time. :) lazy coaches!
ReplyDeleteDo you have to swim freestyle in the race?
ReplyDeleteI scoured the rules and they say nothing about freestyle versus other strokes. Hm. I was planning on freestyle because my swim teacher said that's what most people use in races like this. Maybe it's the fastest stroke? She's got me on this endurance-building plan to stretch out my breaths from every 3 strokes to every 7 strokes. Maybe that's the key to faster swimming? But maybe I'm not ready for that yet. I kinda want to go to the pool on my own and just see if I can swim for half a mile straight using any strokes necessary. I think it would take me about 45 minutes, based on how I swam last week. That's it! I'm making a trial run next week :)
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