Trying to improve my swimming

Hit this pool this morning.  I’ve discovered that I do better when I swim in the deep lap lanes.  Because I can’t stand, I don’t stop at the end to adjust my goggles or what have you.  It’s just easier to keep moving.  Plus I’ve discovered there are fewer flailing swimmers in the deep lanes.  And by that I don’t mean the newbie swimmers.  I mean the old dudes who swim like tanks and seem to somehow manage to windmill their arms and hit everything in their path.  Including someone sharing their lane.

So I swam in the deep lanes.  I need to improve my swimming.  Namely, my speed.  I am a slow swimmer.  And I’m okay with that, but if I want to continue with triathlon, I can’t be the slowest swimmer coming out of the water because I’m not a fast cyclist or a fast runner.

When I swim with the team on Thursdays, we drill, so when I swim by myself, I try to work on endurance.  I usually do 1600m, but today I increased to 2000.  Not a huge difference, but a slightly longer workout never hurts.  My thinking is that if my body is used to swimming longer distances, when I get to a 1500 swim in a triathlon, it won’t feel so bad.

One of my problems is, as always, my heart rate.  When it gets high, I have to breathe more often, which makes swimming a struggle.  I have discovered that what makes it increase is the strength of my kicking.  So I find that I try to swim mostly with my arms.  This is apparently not uncommon with triathletes – allows you to save your legs for the other two portions of the race.  But I need to find a happy medium.

For now, that means just continuing to get to the pool and swim.