Courtney, It’s Not A 50m Freestyle Swim
Yesterday morning I went up to Cochiti Lake to swim with some fellow Outlaws. I took my wetsuit even though I knew it wouldn’t be necessary. The water had been warm enough 2 weeks ago during my first open water swim to not have my wetsuit, but I’ve got issues with open water swims and figured I can’t drown in my wetsuit no matter what I do, so I’m taking it. Today the water was probably 68-70 degrees.
When I got into the water, F and chiquita (yeah, I can’t remember her name, I wanna say it was a K/C or a D) told me how far they were going to swim, and me, being the weenie that I am, and still being afraid that I’m going to tire out and drown, after asking how far the buoy was, said that’s as far as I was going. It was 400m round trip. That’s actually the perfect distance for me because that’s what level of swimming I’m on in terms of triathlons.
So, I get out there and start swimming and it wasn’t long before I was on my back, back stroking. Yeah, I can’t swim a full 400m freestyle. And today, it wasn’t about being afraid either, it was a “i quickly tire and can’t breathe issue”. The good news is, I made it to the buoy and back without freaking out and I did it in 10 minutes. That’s a 6 minute improvement over my Bottomless Triathlon time. I’m going to say it’s because I could float, I wasn’t fighting with the water, and there weren’t any people around, and my blood sugar was perfect but I’ll talk about my diabetes stuff at the end.
After returning to the shore, I toyed around a bit and marveled in my wetsuits ability to keep me at the top of the water and then I made a second attempt at going the 400m. And, I did it. It just wasn’t all freestyle.
When my teammates got back they asked what was up with the backstroke and I told them I couldn’t freestyle the whole way. So chiquita said, let’s go out there, I’ll swim behind you. Ok, that’s cool, I thought to myself: I can do this and I took off. When I stopped I heard her yell “COURTNEY, it’s not a 50m freestyle swim. You need to slow down and breathe every stroke, not every 6th stroke. The reason you’re tiring out and getting out of breath is because you’re going too fast and not getting enough oxygen.”
Now, I couldn’t argue, because I was counting my strokes as I was swimming, and I made up my mind to breathe every 6th stroke because I needed to breathe. Earlier, I was going 10 strokes without breathing, but then I’d fight to get another 10 strokes without breathing, and then after that I’d have to flip over on my back and back stroke. The thing is, when I used to swim, in my younger yearning to compete years, I was best at 50m freestyle, simply because I could make it almost the full 50m breathing only once or twice. The problem was, even though I was fast, when I was done, I was done. There was nothing left in me to give because I had spent it all on 50m. That’s really the only way I know how to swim. Because what would happen is, if I got 100m freestyle, I was doing good, but then I’d have to switch to doing 50-100m freestyle and then 50-100m backstroke. And that’s the only way I could swim distances.
So, back to the lesson at hand, breathing every stroke. She said, let’s go, breath every stroke. And so I took off, stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe, etc. I stopped not long after I hand started and proclaimed that it was too much breathing. I was told that even the pros will breathe every 3 strokes. And told to continue on.
When I finally got around the buoy I made a comment about taking the sprint out of me and I was informed that sprinters don’t last in endurance sports, they go home early. I didn’t want to be one of those that went home early, I knew that I had a lot to learn at this point.
I continued on, she’d say, go 10 strokes, breathe every stroke. I made it 8. And this would continue. The next time I was told to go 10, I made it 13. When I was told to go 20, I only made it 18, and guess what, I could stand at that point. And she told me that it’s faster to swim than it is to walk through the water.
I learned a lot yesterday morning and I’m anxious to get into the pool this week and practice.
2 Responses to “Courtney, It’s Not A 50m Freestyle Swim”
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July 20th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
hey court!
have you thought of working with a masters group? oh and my daughter was on a swim team (She was an A swimmer) and let me tell you… even the sprinters do every stroke and they do distance and sprinting. you need to learn to breathe on each side and breathe every stroke. you’ll be doing a mile in no time!}}
July 25th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Hi Landileigh
Nice to see you visiting here! I’ll be looking for a masters league very soon, apparently they’re the thing to get into if you wanna swim