Dragged my sorry ass out to the swimming pool today. It was hard searching out the motivation to do so and I don’t know why that is. Still tired after the last day I guess.
It’s on days like that though…that things somehow go right.
Lifeguard minimum swimming standard is the ability to do 400m in under 8 minutes. When I was backstroking, I was coming in at around 40-45seconds for 25 m which isn’t exactly highspeed but it’s pretty okay for a non- competitive swimmer particularly since I used to stop at 1600m not because I was tired but because I typically had to be somewhere else.
But if I want to hit that 400m/8minutes target, and possibly do the lifeguard training, I was going to have to learn to freestyle properly and start pulling down the speed and pushing up the distance. For me, the distance issue is linked to breathing technique and on that I have typically sucked because of sinus problems caused by chlorinated water. Which, incidentally, is why I backstroked.
Armed with a noseclip (I now have lots of them) and some determination I spent Saturday trying to push up the distance and although it’s far short of 400m, it’s increasing. Slowly.
When I started this a week or so ago, I expected that I’d push up the distance first because that’s what happened when I was training before. I built up the stamina to do the distances before I started cutting time off the distance. I know that to do 400m, I need to be able to do 16 lengths of the short pool or 8 lengths of the long pool which basically wound up at an average of 30seconds to cover 25 m.
When I timed a couple of 25 m lengths last week I was coming in at 33seconds per length which meant I was about 10% over time. I would have been back distance training tonight only the pool was packed. So I was speed training on short hops. Somewhat to my surprise the first timed length came in at 31.8 seconds. This is a pretty decent improvement, but it wasn’t the limit. Currently on my stop watch is a time of 29.58 seconds which brings me comfortably within range of my target speedwise.
And that makes the distance side of things a whole lot easier to face.
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