Swimming insights

I have recently learned a lot about swimming so thought I'd post some of it.

1. Swim speed = form + effort

Many people put in an amazing amount of effort but have crappy form: they flail like a crazy monkey in the water, their legs weighting them down like anchors. Others have beautiful form but want to use the swim portion of the race to ease into things, relax, and coast through so they are strong for the bike. They also won't come in first. To be competitive in swimming takes form plus effort.

I tend to be of the lazy "good" swimmer variety. I say that knowing I have a ton of things to work on in my form, so I'm not saying I have perfect form either :) But once I did learn reasonable form, swimming became almost effortless and easy, so it was easy to just coast.

When I took the Powerstroke seminar a few weeks ago, he told us that if you want to coast that is fine, but if you want to be at the front of the pack instead of the back, you will need to put in some exertion too.

Right on!

2. I can breath better finally!
At the Powerstroke seminar he took video of me swimming and gave comments. Before I went I warned him, "I tend to slow down, almost sink, when I breath to the left, so keep an eye on that." In the video it is just obvious: I have ridiculously exhaggerated body roll to the left, so I am almost on my back when I turn to my left! My head comes too far out of the water too.

Yesterday at the pool I worked on this over and over, and then realized the problem was the coordination of my stroke and breath on the left--I would wait until the recovery phase of the stroke before breathing, when I was pretty much slowing down and I had already powered through the body roll. So since I am already in the body rolle I would twist my body even more using my upper back muscles instead of my hips. So I was basically becoming a dead weight spinning around in the water.

When I fixed this and really started breathing earlier in the stroke as part of the body roll instead of at the end of the stroke, the breathing became quite natural and fluid just like with my right.

First time, so I may not have all the details right and will talk about this more. But it was awesome. It is amazing how the entry, the catch and pull, the body roll, and breathing all coordinate toether to create a beautiful stroke. Mine is far from perfect, but every now and then I get into the zone where I'm just swimming right.

Dang

Well my six day a week training schedule was just too much. My rotator cuff got angry with me so I've had to take two days off. Instead of three days on, one day off, I'll do a two day on, one day off schedule and see how that works.

So it would be something like:
Day 1: Swim
Day 2: Bike
Day 3: Off
Day 4: Run
Day 5: Weights, light swim, and light bike or run
Day 6 Off
Repeat.

If that doesn't work I'll just work out every other day until my body can take consecutive days. Last year for my tri I only worked out every other day (sometimes every three days) and did OK, so no need to push it. I want to do triathlons for a long time, not just this season. It isn't worth it to overtrain.

It is better to undertrain than overtrain

I woke up today with pain in my rotator cuff. I think perhaps my six day a week schedule is a bit much to start with, even with the light recovery workouts. I'll play it by ear, but I must remember that in the long run it is smarter to err on the side of undertraining than to err on the side of overtraining. If you overtrain you can end up with serious long-term injuries.

I am scheduled to do a hard run today. Perhaps I'll just do a light run today (no big stress on my rotator cuff), like 1.7 miles at an easy pace, and take tomorrow's day off as scheduled.

In general, for the triathlon I think it's best to exercise just enough to meet my goals. My goal for the May 3 Tri is to just finish. The July one was going to be to do better than last year, but they changed the freaking location of the race so I have no basis of comparison. That sucks.

My training schedule

Three days on, one day off. I alternate recovery workouts and hard workouts.

So a full eight-day cycle is something like this:
Day 1: Swim hard
Day 2: Bike light, swim light
Day 3: Run hard
Day 4: Off
Day 5: Swim light, run light
Day 6: Bike hard
Day 7: Run light, bike light
Day 8: Off

Repeat.

The light workouts are very light. About five minutes of drills or easy exercise at low heart rate, just enough to get the blood flowing and flush any lactic acid buildup from the hard workout. For instance, today I did light swim/bike. I did four laps in the pool with a couple of lengths of drills, and then did the spinner for four minutes.

The light workouts are great: they energize me and are useful for working on form in swimming.

In my next post I'll write about the swim drills I use. I am not a very good swimmer, and that is going to be my focus. While bike times are the leg of the race that is most highly correlated with overall time (hence bike is really really important), I am sick of getting out of the water exhausted and near last place. I am tall (6'4") and have a long torso so I should be a strong swimmer. This year that's going to be my focus.

But don't forget the bike: as I said, it is the best predictor of overall place in the race. This makes sense, since it is the longest leg of the race.

Two days down...

Last year I trained 2-3 times a week for my sprint triathlon (750 yards/15 miles/5 k) and did pretty well (for this couch potato). I'm doing it again in July. This year I plan to train more, and do a "warm-up" sprint in April.

I'm injury prone, so can't work out hard 6 days a week, especially as I ease into my real training after a winter of lots of off time. So I plan to do 3 days on, one day off. The three days I swim, then bike, then run the third day, but alternate hard and very light workouts.

We'll see how long I last, but yesterday I had a very good swim workout (450 yards and some drills), and then did a very light bike today (5 minute recovery bike). Tomorrow I plan to do a 1.7 mile run.

Yes, I'm a wimp and have allowed myself to get out of shape over the winter.

Hello world

I plan to post my workouts and such as I prepare for my third triathlon. I plan to do two sprint triathlons this year, but hope to work up to Olympic length for 2010.