A reasonable run and a good swim

Today was a day of decent training.  It started with a nice 12km run through the fields before lunch.  It wasn't entirely comfortable though, the ground was still quite frozen which made it a bit hard to run on.  Never mind, put in a decent time though doing it in 63 minutes at 70-80% HR Max.  I think it is time to retest that though.  If the weather is good I may make a trip to the hill on Golf Course Road next weekend and punish myself.  Still it is all good base training.

A few hours later my dad arrived back and wanted to go swimming, my calves and Achilles were sore, but never mind off to the pool.  A nice 2100m in the pool and I had forgotten those aches and pains.  My underwater kick has got quite good, I managed a few lengths of 15m before surfacing, the maximum allowed.  Hopefully that will make it easier so I can take a few strokes before needing to breath upon surfacing.  I worked on my stroke too, I think I'm bending my arm less, when I concentrate on it it actually feels quite natural.  I also had a go at some turn practice again.  Not sure the other pool users appreciated it (specifically the woman who got in pushed off doing "front crawl" and after 10m almost came to a halt, it seems the push off was where she got her speed), but what the hell.  I put in a few decent turns, hopefully I'll do a proper tumble turn soon.

Titanic Turns

The goal for today's swim session was to improve my "tumble" turns.  Well I failed.  Having read  Gary Van der Meulen's article on tumble turns (http://www.pullbuoy.co.uk/freestyleturns.html) I had a better idea of what I should be attempting to do.  So after 8x200m of front crawl I moved over to the deep end of the now empty 'general swimming' half of the pool. At this point I hold my left arm by my side, pull with the right, push and try to somersault.  Failure. I tried a lot of times, but each and every time I ended up destined for the bottom of the pool. Heading down much like the titanic.  Oh well there is always tomorrow.

Distance swum: ~2000m
Goal for tomorrow: more of the same.