16 Strokes!!

Well training this week has been less than spectacular in a number of ways.

Equipment issues,my Garmin Forerunner quit working Sunday, but decided to fire up again last night, I put a speedometer on my road bike and didn't have time to get it set up properly for 3 days so rode with no idea of specific speeds or distances, had 2 seperate low BG instances, lost strokes on my swim at the begining of the week, blown out the back at 15 miles on the Nebo ridge bike ride, etc...

Some bright spots however

I did get some great training time in, started my strength training again on Wednesday, and the top story of this week happened this morning.

I had decided after my Sunday and Monday swimming results to only do one more Triathlon this year (the Eagle Creek Sprint on Saturday morning)

I did a Total Immersion Swim Clinic about a month ago and one thing that they did not really want me to do was actually swim for about 6 weeks afterwards, in order to imprint the new and somewhat counter intuitive swimming technique that I had learned in 2 days at their clinic

The clinic took me from taking 30 strokes to cover the length of a 25 yd pool, to only 20 strokes in 2 x 4 hour sessions

The idea is to do drills (which include some actual free style drills) to imprint, aerodynamics, balance, etc... on your swimming so that you make the movements in the way they are supposed to be made - automatically - with no forthought or malice :)

If I find my form slipping when freestyling, I am supposed to stop, catch my breath and then start again, even if I am in the middle of the pool.

So a 1500 meter swim when I had not done more than 300 consecutive yards for since the Mores Triathlon in June was a formula for poor form at some point as soon as I got tired.

Monday morning, I started drilling again and did my test at the end of my workout and I had gone from 18 strokes (my improvement subsequent to my TI workshop) to 24 :(

So I drilled the rest of the week and today for grins and giggles thought I would just do a lap and count my strokes. Imagine my suprise when I came up 17 strokes :-) at first I thought I must have miscounted, so I did it again. ..... still 17 strokes.... one more lap just to be sure.... 17 and then..........16 strokes!!!!, now that had to be a fluke,,,, one more time just to be sure and I had a little unco-ordinated mishap mid pool and still came up 16 strokes!!

I did one last length just to get back to the proper side of the pool for exit and 16 strokes again!!

I have to swim 500 yards in the morning and hopefully can hold my form together for most of that, so I am expectling my final sprint of the year to be another personal best!!