Swim Update

Had my second to last lesson in Tucson today. I'm going to miss Coach Geoff; he has helped me understand the technical and mental aspects of swimming. He's also taught me enough to work on while in Maryland and another reason to return to Tucson:); highly recommend him (http://www.dolphinsofthedesert.com).

My lower back has been hurting me the last two days; don't know whether it is related to swimming but I only swam 4x this week (I try to swim at least 5 days/week between weekly lessons). I was unsure my back would hold up today but we took it easy; hopefully it will allow me to do my technical session tomorrow:

• 10x25s - warm up
• 16x50s - interval freestyle

Geoff knows I want to improve my endurance (i.e., swim longer distances) so today he taught me about interval training. The "interval" is the total time it takes to swim 50 yards plus any rest time before starting the next 50. Based on my speed, he calculated my interval to be 1 minute 55 seconds.

We also discussed my kick; Geoff says I'm current doing 5-6 kicks per stroke and might want to cut back to 4 to use less energy. This means I would kick 2x for the left arm extension and 2x for the right arm for a total of 4. I tried it out; it will take getting used to but should help reduce my energy expenditure and give me the kicking structure I'm currently lacking - sometimes I kick fast, sometimes not so fast because I didn't know what I was doing. In general, I've always felt that a lot of my energy was going to my kicking without much reward; looking forward to this change.