I went to a lecture last night on racing long-course events at my local bike store. One thing the speaker said that surprised me, was that unless you are a totally pathetic swimmer, putting extra time into swimming is all but useless. He said for the majority of people who have average to above average swimming ability, adding extra swim workouts will have a negligible effect on overall swim time. I know that I'm not a pathetic swimmer, I'm pretty much a middle-of-the-packer, but I have to think that the extra time I'm spending on the Masters swim team doing drills and working on my technique, while maybe won't shave a ton of time off of my swim, it will hopefully economize my swimming so that I'm conserving all of the energy I can for the bike and the run. I really feel like this coach has helped me immensely with my form and I can definitely feel a difference in the way I'm swimming.
And, while this won't help me at ALL in an ironman, I did my first fairly competent butterfly today! I've always been so intimidated by the butterfly, but I've been working on it, and today I put it all together and actually made it 200 yards. Yippee! I was so excited I asked the coach to help me with flip turns. For the first one, I didn't even touch the wall. For the second, I pushed off! For the third, I pushed off, went sideways and smacked my head into the side of the pool. Time to call it a day! And I did all of this with the added challenge of wearing my 3 yr-old's hot-pink swimming goggles.
