Single Sport Training - Swim

Swim Route - Turn around off end of third dock

I started officially training and keeping a log about a week and a half ago. For the first two weeks I am focusing on single sport training. I'm working one sport each day alternating between swim, bike and walk so that they all get equal time.

Today was a swim day. I view this as my most challenging of the three sports. Now that Joe has decided on the course and the rules, I was able to swim the distance and route that I will do for the triathlon. Fortunately, the route goes past 3 of our neighbors' docks so feels more secure with places to stop if needed.

So far, I haven't needed to use the docks. I did the swim today in 15 minutes which surprised me. It felt a lot longer than that.

Here's how I'm doing on the swim challenges:

Water temperature - I lucked out here as we are having very warm weather. Water temperatures have been running at about 80 degrees in the lake. Very comfortable. I know I like to get wet gradually before I swim. No problem there as we will be having an "in water" start.

Oogieness of lake swimming - Surprisingly this hasn't bothered me much. It seems that once I decided to give this a try I subconsciously also accepted that there would be some oogieness. I've been swimming through patches of vegetation, putting my feet down into gushy bottoms and pushing away floating gobs of algae without feeling at all distressed. As lakes go, ours is pretty clean, the water is clear and it has a relatively sandy bottom. The algae was only there on a really windy day so may not be a factor on race day.

Working on my Breast Stroke

Swim strokes - I'm a bit worried about bumping into other swimmers when I do the back stroke. I'm trying to increase my distance with the breast stroke and minimize the amount of back stroke. I doubt if I can do the whole thing with breast stroke as my neck and shoulders get tight. Also, I need the change of postion to manage another challenge - foot cramps (see below). So I'm hoping that the other swimmers will get far enough ahead of me that I won't be too close to them.  If necessary I plan to steer a course farther out into the lake on the outbound portion to avoid congestion. I figure by the time I turn and head back I'll have the lake all to myself!

Working on my Back Stroke

Foot cramps - I pretty much get at least mild foot cramps if I swim more than a couple of laps. This is a bit frightening in open water. So far, the alternating between the frog kick of breast stroke and the flutter kick of back stroke helps minimize the cramps.  When I've gotten cramps during my training swims I've just floated on my back flexing my feet until they go away. Worst case scenario: If I get a severe cramp that won't go away I'll swim in toward shore until I can touch bottom and walk it off. Since we're never that far from the shore and/or a dock I'm not too worried about this.

Stamina - This is something else about which I'm pleasantly surprised. I thought it would be a big stretch for me to swim this far all at once. Actually, I'm doing okay with it. I haven't been able to get through the full distance without a few rests floating on my back. But I've needed fewer of those than I anticipated and, hopefully, will need them less and less as I continue my training.

In conclusion, I'm feeling really good about my swimming. One realization that has come to me is that I am now thinking of ways to manage the triathlon adapting to what works (or doesn't work) with my body. Its accepting my limitations but not letting them stop me from making progress and achieving a challenging goal. It feels a lot better than my past "I could never do that" thinking. Way cool!