2013: Tri-ing something new

[marathondan]

So, the first swimming lesson. Summary: hell.

I’ve signed up for 10 weeks of group lessons at the local pool. The intermediate group divides itself into three lanes – a group of matey chaps in a range of shapes and sizes, who look like they’d been doing this for a while; a middling and mixed group who look quietly focused and keen to improve; and us, three newbies plus a veteran of a whole six weeks’ lessons.

Unfortunately the normal class teacher is away, and our stand-in – Heather, who until last term was teaching Naomi every week – isn’t familiar with the curriculum for our level. After setting off the faster groups, she comes to us with a clipboard, offering some number of hundred metres’ warmup in stroke of choice, followed by 200m fast freestyle. No, advises Una, our experienced member, we’re not quite at that level. We settle on 300m warmup in stroke of choice, and then we’ll take it from there.

I set off in my steady crawl, nice bilateral breathing, as I’d practiced… when was it... 18 months ago? Hmm, maybe I should have done a bit more practice before starting lessons. Then again, for the last 6 months I haven’t even been able to get my running shit together, so organising myself to swim as well just wouldn’t have happened. This is where I’m at.

OK, so this is going quite well… for the first 25m. 50m in and I’m completely knackered. How can this be? One of my fellow newbies, whose name now escapes me, expresses exactly the same problem I have: fine with the other strokes, but in freestyle I just run out of breath.

Now, everyone always says freestyle is all about the breathing. But I can do breathing – I can hold my breath underwater, I can swim with my face down, I can exhale smoothly, I can do bilateral breathing. No, it can’t be all about the breathing. Surely it’s about technique, efficiency, upper body strength. I can work on those.

Turns out it’s all about the breathing.

The problem seems to be as follows. With a dry-land activity, if I’m running out of breath, I can reduce the intensity but continue to gulp down air until I recover. In the pool, if I reduce the intensity, I also reduce the stroke rate… which means I have to breathe more slowly, and I can’t recover. I flail wildly, become even less efficient, and grind to a splashy halt.

So I need to work on the breathing. A quick web search suggests the breathing might be all about the exhalation. Something to try next time.

Back at the ranch, I struggle through 250m (skipping the last 50) in a mix of crawl and breast stroke. I know things are bad when I can feel myself sweating, in the pool. Right, that’s the warmup, now for the lesson.

She has us kicking with floats, 50m at a time. Ah, that thing I last did about 35 years ago? Well, I know my kick is pretty weak, but let’s give it a go… I push and glide, kicking steadily, head down, gradually slowing down… I’ve come to a complete standstill. I can see the bottom of the pool, and it’s not moving, despite the frantic thrashing of my feet. Oh, now I’ve run out of breath. How do I breathe? I can turn my head to the side, where my arm is in the way, or stick my head up at the front, losing any last semblance of streamlining. Either way, my floppy core can’t hold my body in a straight line, and I have no chance of recovering forward motion. So I limp along, unable to breathe, only moving by pushing off from the bottom or sneaking an overarm stroke, and return to base with a face like a beetroot – a combination no doubt of effort and embarrassment. Need to work on this one, I think.

Next is crawl stroke, but holding a float out front between strokes. This just makes crawl even slower, and therefore breathing even less frequent. Either that, or I don’t really get it. Nightmare.

Back to normal crawl. Ah, this feels so much better without the float, maybe I’ve cracked it… for one length. Then comes the familiar inability to get oxygen in quickly enough. It’s a bit like the first time I ran intervals in a ski mask (hasn’t everyone done that?), except worse.

We do a bit of backstroke coaching, which is a lot better. We do quite a lot of resting and wondering why it’s all so hard. Then that’s it. I’m hoping for a more structured lesson next week.

I jump onto Rusty, wait for Malcolm to contact the mothership, and take a 5 mile route home. Being on the bike is a great relief – suddenly all that’s required is honest graft, no technique to worry about, at least not at my basic level.

I’ll do some reading before the next lesson – swimsmooth.com seems good. Also I think the normal teacher will give a lot more technical advice. And it may well be that my policy of only one session per week will have to go out the window. I’m not disheartened. My performance with the float was probably worse than 6 year old Naomi’s, and I have returned to a childlike level of ability. Hopefully I’m not too old to learn.

At least I’ve dispelled any suspicion that this was going to be too easy. I want to be able to swim a mile in 6 months’ time, and at the moment I can literally only manage 25m before I run into problems.

This is all good. You may recall from past, slightly more daft, challenges, that I crave the fear of not knowing whether I can do this. I know from experience that a hell of a lot can be achieved in 6 months.