An Interesting Swimming Metaphor

  I am back from vacation and I am back on track in my training. Everything seems to be progressing, albeit slowly, but progressing just the same. I met my friends Tony and Mandy for our Thursday morning easy 4 mile recovery run. I needed some more miles when we were finished so I continued on for another 3 miles for a total of 7 miles. Immediately after that I went over to Deep Eddy Pool for some swim training with Barton. We have been doing most of our swimming in Barton Springs for the past month so he can't see exactly how my stroke technique is coming along. We spent a few laps working on form and body positioning. Basically Barton told me to, "Swim like a Stripper." Hahaha. I need to swim with both my chest and butt out. I didn't quite understand his analogy (wink wink) but I did comprehend the message. My legs sink when I swim and I always thought that was because I had a weak kick. It turns out it has more to do with my posture in the water, but I still do have a rather weak kick. If I can position my hips at the top of the water then that will be less drag then my arms will have to pull. Elongating my mid section will allow more oxygen in the lungs and help my glide. If I can get this stroke down then I have confidence that I can go from just finishing the swim to being competitive in the swim.
  Today I woke up for an 8 am long swim at Barton Springs with none other than Barton. He just got his wetsuit in the mail yesterday and wanted to try it out on a long swim. I have my old surfing wetsuit from when I lived in Northern California. It is a solid full 3/2 wetsuit that still is in pretty good condition. I am not sure if it will make for a good triathlon suit so today was the test run. On a side note I ran into the wonderful and talented Coach Amy on the way into the Springs and after chatting with her for about 10 minutes I realized that there is a slight possibility of talking her (Mark would have to go too) into doing the full Ironman Texas next Spring in Houston. More on that later. I got into the water with the wetsuit and was amazed at the buoyancy. I expected a little help from the suit but this seemed too easy. Also, gone was the frigid temperatures of Barton Springs. The trade off  seems to be range of motion. My arms got a reprieve from having to pull all of my weight but that plus was balanced out with having to overcome the restrictiveness of a full wetsuit. This will take some more exploring. My 1/4 mile time did improve by around an average of 45-60 seconds. I ended up only getting a 3/4 mile swim in before the guards kicked out the free swimmers. Time to rest before my 12 mile run tomorrow. For now I will repeat my new swimming mantra, "Swim Like A Stripper."