swim regularly

Vacation time interrupted my swimming rhythm. No matter. I’m swimming tomorrow morning. :)

I know I have to get my sleep, coz it affects my desire to swim! So, I’m putting in a new goal. Get enough sleep. That goal actually pushes me towards my other goal—> swim regularly.

My dive class pool session got postponed (again!), so I decided just to swim this evening. Since I was feeling a little achy from the gym session of the morning, I figured that I would swim easy. The other special circumstance was that my watch had run out of battery. So I was ready for my easy untimed swim.

I focused on swimming easy, doing strokes with minimal effort but still keeping my TI principles intact. I felt that I was almost lying on the water at times. As I swam I found myself tweaking little things, such as lifting my head smoothly and slightly only, and also not kicking much. I think i was enjoying my core twisting such that I didnt want to expend to the energy with the kick. I knew that I was trying to be more efficient, but normally such efforts of mine don’t really show great rewards.

Bottom line was that after I had done with my 1km swim (which I was able to do since I started early for a change, 8:05pm,) I climbed out of the pool, and checked my mobile phone for what time it was and wondered why I had not been shooed away by the pesky pool people. I wasn’t because the time had read 8:35pm. I had swam my 1K in 30 minutes, which is a vast improvement for me.

If yesterday is took me 27 minutes to swim 750 meters, and today it took me 30 minutes to swim 1000 meters, that’s an efficiency improvement of 20%.

If Sunday was about the pelvis being aligned. Today was keeping that in mind, and also going with the flow. I tried doing some bi-lateral breathing, and it wasn’t too bad. My balance really favors the left side, and with a little practice perhaps I can go for the right side more often. My first 300 meters were pretty good. I felt I was swimming smoothly and slipping through the water. That’s a feeling that one wants to get. The last 450 weren’t too bad, though I think it was already my body also losing patience and wanting a workout. In the end I wanted to swim 1k, but I ended up doing 750m. That’s pretty decent.

Part of the reason that I didn’t do the last 250m is coz Makati Sports Club personnel can really be un-helpful. It took 10 minutes to find someone to open the pool lights at around 8:15, and they were bugging me to get out of the pool at around 8:47. So essentially I did my 750m from 8:25 to 8:52. That ain’t too bad I think. But the extra time could have easily given my 250m. One of them also had the nerve to rush me out of the changing room though I was out at 8:56. Geez. Are they stressed out or what. Their pool and locker room hours are til 9pm. They kind of suck.

A mini epiphany occurred this evening as I was going for my swim. I had been having trouble rotating enough on my right side, and this was naturally affecting the length that my entire body was slicing through the water. Realized 2/3 through the swim, that I had to focus on where the edge of my pelvic bone was in relation to the water. If the tip of my pelvis was properly twisted to the right or the left, the rest of the body would naturally follow. I was thinking too much of the shoulders and upper body, when I should have been thinking about the larger and more powerful part, that would lead the entire body—that is the core and pelvis. A good realization that would help in future swims.

I had been swimming 750 and 850m distances. I had no problem tonight going for the 1K, and not feeling as over-worked.

I have two pool sessions this week for my dive class, so this makes me feel slightly more confident about how I will do.