I had an excellent swim yesterday, which has me quite excited. When I started swimming about 6 weeks ago I hadn’t swum in forever, and had never really managed any freestyle. I could swim about 20 yards of freestyle consistently, and had a lot of trouble breathing in water. Breathing in water still really sucks, but I do it a lot less often now. I’ve been swimming 30 minutes, but yesterday I resolved to do 45 minutes.
I started 25 yards on my back, 50 yards freestyle, etc. About half way through I think I did 75 yards freestyle by accident. So I did 75 freestyle on purpose to see how that went. It went well enough that I did 25 yards back/75 yards freestyle the rest of the way. I feel close to the point where I can just do a lot of freestyle without stopping. There’s nothing that I can point to that is limiting me there. I just feel increasingly uncomfortable (mostly my breathing) and am very relieved when I’ve completed the distance I set for myself.
I think I’ll get to the point where I can swim just freestyle by just doing what I’ve been doing. I’m not so sure about improving my stroke, though. I’ve read random things on the web, and can do certain things when I focus on them (elbows high, thumb to thigh at the end of the stroke). I managed to glide a little bit on some strokes yesterday. I ordered a Total Immersion DVD which arrived on Thursday, but I discovered yesterday morning that it doesn’t play on my Playstation 2. That should help me some way with improving my stroke. Eventually I’ll have to break down and pay even more money to take a class here, or join the masters group. Not to mention start swimming in the ocean to get comfortable with that. I swam 1450 yards in 45:38. I hit 450 yards (the tri swim will be 440 yards) after 13:28. Swim on.