Success in Swimming

Our team had a swim clinic on Saturday and I really learned a lot. The most important thing I took away from that practice was to kick less. My coach reminded me that in a triathlon, I will need to save my legs for the cylcing and running, so I need to kick less during my swim and focus on my stroke. Best piece of advice ever. Honestly, I feel like I'm going slower when I don't kick much, but I am in fact going faster and using fewer strokes since I'm reaching further. That really helped. I kept that in mind when I swam on my own yesterday. It will be interesting to see how our open water swims go. It will be a LOT different than swimming in a pool. Coach even had us swim 3 to a lap on Saturday to get used to being crowded - that gave me anxiety, but I see the point in doing it. I've also had to switch up what stroke I do after awhile, like do the breast stroke or side stroke to keep my head out of water for a bit while I catch my breath. Hopefully as time goes on, I'll be doing this less and less.

After practice Saturday, I went to get fitted for running shoes. I bought a pair of Saucony's, along with several pairs of socks, body glide, a patellar tendon band, and a variety of GU, gels, fuel gummies, etc. Oh yeah, and I bought some electrolyte capsules. I think I'm in good shape as far as gear goes now.

So, to recap, here's my workouts for the past few days:

Friday, February 13, 2009: Rest

Saturday, February 14, 2009: Swim clinic

Sunday, February 15, 2009: Rest

Monday, February 16, 2009: Swam 20 laps

Today I have muscle conditioning and a 5 mile bike ride. Tomorrow and Saturday are running days - 3 miles each day. I'm excited to try out my new shoes and patellar tendon band - should really help with my tendonitis.

By the way, I've gotten $170 in donations in the past week, so yay for that! And thanks to everyone who has donated - you rock! If anyone else would like to donate, please click on this link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/mid/HyveeTri09/arobbins