Training Journal #6

I swim like a lifeguard.

That is what Christine told me. Apparently that is not a good thing, but its also not an unusual thing, and it wasn't a deal-breaker for her. She had me run through a bunch of drills while at Ridley. I have to incorporate more of a body roll/rotation into my stroke, and I need to get my elbows high and my hand in flat. She gave me a DVD to watch, 2 hours all about how the properly catch the water with your hand for the most effective stroke. Riveting I assure you.

I have also re-discovered something -- I am really really awful at flutter kick. Christine had wanted me to do 400m of flutter kick. I gave her 200m and it almost killed me. There's a girl at Brock masters named Erin, and, mind you she has the fastest kick on the team, she is literally faster than me even when I have flippers on. It is SO sad. So I have to get better at kicking. End of story.

Christine is teaching me about the nutrition component of long-distance swimming. Specifically the way you fuel your body during a workout. I have purchased a small tub of electrolytes and a large tub of carbo-pro. Carbo-Pro.....a girl's best friend. I'm supposed to mix 3-4 scoops of CP and 1 scoop of Electrolytes into a water bottle and drink it over the course of a practice. I was nervous about how it would taste, I thought the carbo-pro would be like protein powder and have that dreadful chalky after-taste. But no! Completely tasteless. The difficult part is actually the fruit-punch flavoured electrolytes because they're actually really strong. I don't drink a lot of juice in my normal life, and I definitely am not used to drinking juice in the middle of a workout. I'm not talking like weak flavoured gatorade, I'm talking pouring too many juice crystals into a small container and wondering whether or not you're drinking syrup. Now, no offense to runners or any other forms of athletes, I'm sure it sucks to have this stuff bounce up and down in your stomach as you run. However, I am positive it is worse to drink the stuff and then do a few hundred somersaults aka flip-turns. This mixture will apparently become my best friend and will be the vast majority of what fuels me across Lake Erie, so I had better get used to it.

I've swam 15.5km this week which I'm proud of.

Wednesday we did a practice at Brock where we swam 16x100m on 2 minutes. Basically you have 2 minutes to swim 4 lengths but if you want any rest time you need to do it in under 2 minutes before you do it 15 more times. This is not the first time I've done this. We did it a few weeks ago and I came in at 1:45 pretty consistently. I have clearly already improved though because this week I was 1:36 or under every time. The fastest was 1:32. I remember in high school what a big deal it was to shave off even 2 seconds from your time, so I'm really excited about 9!