Silhouette In The Water

Last night, I learned a key lesson in swimming. We've been talking about keeping your movements minimal in the water, but yesterday something really clicked. Coach Ed said, "Your swimming creates a pocket in the water." That pocket, allows you to breathe, without lifting your head out of the water. All you have to do is turn your head, without changing the angle at all, keep your chin down and forehead still in the water, and you're able to still breathe.

The movement of swimming and the bow wave that your body and head create allows a pocket in the wave and pushes the water under your face, allowing you to breathe without arching up your neck in anyway.

With this new tip in mind, I rocked out on our 1/2 mile swim. I was swimming in the basic-basic lane after being exhausted from a day's worth of traveling back from the midwest. I was able to pull away from the pack, and nicely place myself between the basic and advanced folks for the snake swim that we did.

A snake swim is when you swim up and down alternate lanes of our 9-lane pool, thereby never going against traffic. In essence, to do a half-mile, you swim up and down the pool (back and forth) twice, and then go and extra 4 lanes... which I was able to complete in 30 minutes!!!! Even though I was away from the pack, Coach Ed made sure to come up behind me, scratch me, push me, and make me understand that in a group swim like a triathlon, its not always going to be easy going all the time. Thanks Coach. :)

Here's a great website illustrating everything I learned, that helped me reach that 30 minute marker! http://www.swimsmooth.com/breathing.html (combined with, of course, the finger tip drag)