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Was really looking forward to swimming today, but once in the pool my arms just felt so tired that I really couldn’t make much progress and struggled to swim more than 200m at a time. Neither did it help that I was sharing the lane with someone who clearly wasn’t keen to share. So I just tried to keep it simple and do technique work and some kick.

I’m coming to the conclusion that for front crawl turns I should look at trying to use only the inertia of my body to power the rotation in the turn, as opposed to using the last pull to provide the power. I want to experiment with this idea a bit. At present I find that my arms tire much more quickly when I’m doing tumble turns and the only reason I can immediately see for that is the amount of effort I’m using to generate the rotation in the turn. Something for another time, anyhow.

Total distance for the month: 18,300m
Total distance for this year: 330,400m
Distance compared to annual target: 17,800m ahead

Feeling much better today, I got warmed up and did some kick and then went into a set of 50m front crawl swims with bilateral breathing and tumble turns. Generally it went very well although I messed up a few when I got confused over which side I should breath on. Generally though I was very pleased with the progress I’ve made since I temporarily stopped working on my turns because I couldn’t quite get the timing because I was only breathing to my left. The turns feel faster and actually I think I’m faster through the water too. In the end I covered another 3.2km.

Total distance for the month: 15,800m
Total distance for this year: 327,900m
Distance compared to annual target: 17,300m ahead

On the recommendation of a friend I had planned to go and watch a tri fitness (swimming) session on Monday eveningto see if I fancied doing it for a bit of a change to my usual swims, but there’s been a lurgy going around and it seems like I caught a mild dose of it. Between the car and the entrance to the pool I suddenly felt far too ill to swim and had to go straight back home 🙁

By Tuesday lunchtime I was feeling a little better so decided I could get to the pool and do an easier session, if multiple 100s can count as “easier”. It was much the same style as recent swims, but with plenty of 100s practicing bilateral breathing thrown in. I did at least cut back on the distance though, covering only 2,100m.

Total distance for the month: 12,600m
Total distance for this year: 324,700m
Distance compared to annual target: 16,100m ahead

After three long weeks the roadworks are all done and I can go back to my usual route to the pool. I really wasn’t much in the mood when I went today though, but after twenty lengths or so I got a bit more into the swing of things. Unfortunately the pacing of the swimmers in my lane varied wildly making turn practice a bit of a liability, so I left that for another day yet again and just stuck to front crawl, kick and bilateral breathing practice for 3.2km.

Total distance for the month: 10,500m
Total distance for this year: 322,600m
Distance compared to annual target: 16,000m ahead

An odd day today. I arrived at the pool with my daughter who had decided that she would like to come for a swim too only to find that the public session had been changed to “adults only” due to a lack of life guards. So we trogged off down the motorway one stop to another local pool, missing the traffic queues on the M5 due to an accident that required the road to be resurfaced by literally a few hundred yards (the tailbacks apparently reached twenty miles later on).

I’ve not been to this particular pool before. It only opened fairly recently. As one would probably expect of a modern pool the changing facilities etc. were fairly smart, but the pool itself was a disaster! At the shallow end it is 0.9m deep — almost shallow enough for me to sit in and still be able to breathe. At the deep end I don’t think it was much more than 1.1m. The only real positive was that they had decent lane ropes in and lane labelled for “fast”, “medium” and “slow” pace swimmers. My plan for the session had been to do some work on putting my bilateral breathing and turns together, but there was no way I was going to attempt that in such shallow water. In the end I decided to stick to working on my bilateral breathing, doing 100s breathing only to my weaker side whilst my daughter worked on her 200m fly. After 2,000m I decided to call it a day.

Total distance for the month: 8,300m
Total distance for this year: 319,400m
Distance compared to annual target: 14,800m ahead

My arms felt a little heavy after doing my warm-up today so I decided to change things around a bit. Not that I made it that much easier for myself, doing twenty 100m swims practising bilateral breathing. After that I was only good for a bit of kick and a swim down, for a total of 3,000m.

Total distance for the month: 6,300m
Total distance for this year: 317,400m
Distance compared to annual target: 14,800m ahead

Pretty much a straight repeat of two days ago. Did the first 1,500m in under 28 minutes which I think is fairly good going for gliding into the wall and lazy open turns. Adding another 1,500m on top was tough going though.

Total distance for the month: 3,300m
Total distance for this year: 314,400m
Distance compared to annual target: 13,800m ahead

A very enjoyable swim today. Into the water and I was off on a 1,500m swim straight away. Now I can do that in under 30 minutes I really need to start looking at getting the tumble turns in. I reckon that the glide into the wall, turn and push off might easily drop five seconds a length, which over sixty lengths ought to take me down to less than twenty-five minutes, assuming I can handle the removal of the little rest that each slow turns gives me 🙂

After that I did more front crawl, kick and bilateral breathing practice. At 3,200m I was feeling so good that I did another 100m and would have gone on, but for the fact that I really had other things I ought to be doing.

So, 59km for the month which I think is my best ever. I am quite chuffed.

Total distance for the month: 59,000m
Total distance for this year: 311,100m
Distance compared to annual target: 14,500m ahead