Alex's swim journal

I missed yesterday's swim b/c I was dealing with a backlog of paperwork and time got away from me. So today I almost forgot that I was supposed to begin working on flip-turns. Scotty was already in the water when I got there and seeing him reminded me... it's good to be held accountable! I had made a pledge to forgo any further open-turns once October rolled around--as comfortable as those open-turns have been for me over the last couple of years. It was time to make good.

Here's what I did:

5 minutes practicing flip-turns floating into the wall.
600 warm-up with flip-turns
10 x 50 on 1:00 (:43-:45)
10 x 100 on 2:00 (1:34-1:36)
10 x 50 on 1:00 (:44-:46)
100 breast
[2200 total in 50 minutes]

So, every once in a while I would just nail the turn and feel pretty good. Every once in a while I would flop and sputter; often I felt like an errant bottle rocket, squirting all over the lane. One thing I have to figure out is my breathing going into the wall. Because my open turn has accustomed me to getting a quick breath at the wall, I would neglect to breathe then come out of the turn with my lungs bursting (or so it seemed) looking for that breath.

I liked doing the 50s, though they were slow, because I only had the one flip. The 100s were challenging because I had to maintain that concentration for 3 turns. I'm hoping it gets better. I guess it's like anything, it will take a lot more practice.