Eluding Tuonela

Today was the last day of my second swim training course. I've now practiced swimming for about 6 months and I'm still a long way of my goal of being able to swim 400m effortlessly. I can swim 50m in about a minute but after that I either lose my composure or need some time to rest to do more. But the slow progress doesn't really matter that much as I've become to absolutely love my time in the pool.

I took my GoPro with me for the last time of the practice to maybe film some swimming for technique analysis. Unfortunately we didn't have much time and we only had one chance to do one quick lap with my friend where one would film the other. Neither of us hadn't done any underwater filming before and we didn't get a chance to test anything beforehand so the end result wasn't that great but even the short glimpses from the 25m swim taught me lots. For example my body position is all messed up; my legs are way low and my head is still very high when I breathe which makes the lower body sink even more while breathing. Also I have a clear low-elbow catch which means I lose most of the power from my catch and it also puts the posture in wrong form. Lot's to learn for the next course which starts in two weeks time!

In addition to my Monday training course swims, I've now found a rhythm of 3-4 total swims during the week. I'm still training in the 25m pool as it feels most comfortable but I no longer swim individual pool lengths but practice my flip turn and swim at least two pool lengths at a time. Outside of the training course I've tried to do at least 1k swim (consisting of several 50-100m lengths w/ rest between) plus a separate (Garmin) session of drills each time.

My average 1k times have come down from ~2.20/100 to about ~2.05/100 since the summer. Still very slow but I feel like I'm seeing at least some progress with most of the training sessions. And most importantly, I love the raining itself!

I've been focusing almost all my training on swimming, and this week I swam for the first time more than I ran! I'm still pretty slow and I don't have enough stamina to swim even 200m without being totally out of breath but I'm seeing small improvements still. Being in the pool at least three times a week helps to keep the momentum.

I've lost most my interest in running since it's become pretty lonely and also wet. I started yet another Garmin training program for triathlon but haven't been quite strict with it since some of the training has been overlapping with my swims and I'm much more interested in improving that than doing anything else. Would be nice to find some company to run with, tho!