This morning I was feeling a bit "off". I was nervous going down to the water. Even though there were 7 other people there...I wasn't feeling good about it. It may be because of the weather...but I wasn't feeling too excited to be in the water.
Instead of doing my usual route (Swim North to the last dock and swim back), I decided to stay near where other swimmers were. As I was swimming back North, I thought to myself...Lets just go out a little ways and see what happens. I then got a pretty deep nagging feeling...so I trusted it, turned around, and went back to shore.
Again, I don't know why I felt that way...but I did. I only got 1/2 way through the workout that I wish I would have gotten but I feel ok about doing .6m in less than 20 minutes.
With continued training, that would put my 1/2 Ironman swim estimate time at 40 minutes, and my Ironman time at 1:20:00. Obviously this is with the required training...but it is a good goal estimate based on what I can accomplish now.
There are 2 benefits that I have gained with swimming with a garmin 305:
1) I have the auto-lap set up to beep every .1 mile. When I am swimming, I always feel like I am going much faster than I am...I just keep waiting for the beep and it comes some time after I expect it to. I am glad that it is there. It is helping me focus on long-term speed maintenance.
2) I can see how my sighting really is. It appears that I am better at sighting than I think.
-When I was swimming south, I was sighting off of a yellow slide in somebody's yard. When I look at the map, it is a pretty darn straight line. This builds confidence in my ability to swim around a crowded course.
-When I was swimming North, I was just staying in between the buoys and the shore. (There were quite a few people swimming the buoys). As soon as I got past the beach, I started sighting off a boat tied to a dock. Looking at the map, it looks like I was doing a good job of it.
One other thing learned:
-I learned this at the very end of my last swim and the very end of this swim. When out of the water, my wetsuit pulls down on my shoulders. It sort of causes my shoulders to go back and my chest stick out. I hadn't really thought about it, but as Im swimming, it does the same thing.
-When I intentionally push my face down into the water, it closes up my chest and lessens the hydrodynamic friction. I really need to implement that completely into my stroke: Force my face and my shoulders down into the water to open my back and close my chest.
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