yesterday’s achievement: 1000m. I still can’t string more than 25 of those metres together in one go but the recovery time is falling off big time and yesterday I really had the feeling of not being one of the worst swimmers in the pool.

The first 400m is always the hardest. Once I get past them…it seems to be easier. I don’t know why. It was this way the last time I was training too; once I got to 400m everything racked up dead easy. Also, the last 100m last night was pretty tough as well – the absolute limit for last night.

So, a lot done, more to do.

I’m trying to sort out the technique today. I made the bad mistake of reading teh boards.ie swimming forum which was demoralising to say the least. Apparently 25-30seconds for 25m is like “slow”.

uhoh. I’m doing drills and concentrating on technique and I come in at 36sec. If I scrap all that I come in at 29.5.

I’m now wondering what “fit” actually is. What’s a decent fitness level for a non-elite swimmer, non elite sportswoman and all that jazz? I know I have that 400m in 8 minutes lark to aim for and by the looks of things, that may not be particularly taxing for a lot of swimmers (although right now for me, it’s out of reach). I also know that once I break 400m even in my swim sessions, it gets easier. The last 200m were easier than the first 400m today and I remember that from the last time too, when I was backstroking; the first 400m sucked. The subsequent 1200m that brought me up to 1600m didn’t suck quite so much.

Anyway, the technique bit seems to be improving a bit, and the recovery periods between lengths are dropping off so I suppose that’s good.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that Westwood is basically kid friendly, that you can get family membership and by and large, the kids are generally well behaved. But today, there were loads of them. It may be because the weather was kinda changeable so going to the beach was not necessarily a good option if it was likely to start spitting rain, for example. I can vouch for the fact that getting rain soaked is not a good idea. I get given out to when I do it too so don’t anyone tell anyone else that I got drenched on Thursday. I digress.

Anyway, now that I am sort of back swimming [if we skip over the little detail of not going for 10 days owing to trips to Cork, Kerry and London] I have also started reading my Total Immersion book. I am questioning the wisdom. Last time out I was sprinting 25m in under 30 seconds. This was good.

Today, while trying to remember the bits about keeping my body long in the water, and trying to slice through the water like a yacht rather than a barge (I kid you not – see chapter 2 or so), I managed to sprint 25m [once - when I didn't have to duck around toddlers and babies] in 35 seconds. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. The whole training session = disaster more or less. I didn’t cover the distance I wanted to cover (even if I couldn’t chain the lengths), and about the only thing that could be considered positive was a compare between the total immersion-ish technique and my more usual messed up freestyle was that yes, the total immersion technique is more efficient in terms of distance/number of strokes.  So realistically I might well be better off dropping the speed again, per original plan, and working more on that technique on the grounds that I’ll make better progress at the far end.

God I really need to get that 400m chained up though. Not wanting to put myself under any pressure but I’m going to Achill kitesurfing in 3 or 4 weeks’ time and the objective was to be sufficiently close to it by then so that I could address the whole kitebuying side of things more closely.

In the future, I won’t be going swimming at 3pm on a Saturday. Not if it’s going to be backed like it was today anyway.

From the total immersion freestyle forum.

And I often wonder why so many people go to martial arts as a means of self discovery. I now believe that the reason is martial arts has a very immediate evidence of false judgements about yourself. If I think my skills are better than they are, I end up hurting a lot. If I choose the wrong approach, I end up flat on the floor with pretty lights drifting around my head.

I quite like the idea of the pretty lights. Which is probably not the right answer.