Month: July 2018

Beginner Swimming Lessons – Done

Posted by Derek on in SwimTraining, Training

This week marked the end of my 2-week beginner swimming class. It was successful in that by the second day, I was swimming freestyle with side-breathing.  Mind you, I wasn’t swimming fast nor was I swimming far, but I was swimming nonetheless.  I would swim 25m and then need many minutes of rest before I can swim another length.

That was when the lessons became somewhat useless.  I was in a class with folks that were afraid of the water, but by the second day, I was mostly on my own as the instructors focused on the beginner adults.  I would swim lengths of the pool taking breaks while the class did other things.

For the second week, I aimed to swim at least 200m each day in total and I managed to do that.  While I can’t swim more than 25m at a time without a rest, I have noticed the amount of rest I need is getting less and less.

I have signed up for the advanced class which starts in two weeks time, so for the next two weeks until then, I’ll simply go swim 4 days a week and work on reducing the rest time even more and aim to try and swim 50m at a time instead of 25.

This reminds me of when I first started running where I could barely run a couple blocks without huffing and puffing and having to walk, but over time the amount of walking got less and less until I didn’t need to walk, and the huffing-and-puffing went away.

I just need to keep working at it.

My first swim goal is to swim 400m without stopping.  That would be quite a milestone as that is the distance I had to swim for my Divemaster certification and it took me 17min 39secs.

Week in Review: July 2 – July 8 2018

Posted by Derek on in BikeTraining, RunTraining, Training, Weekly Review

The highlight for this week was the first week of the beginner swim class that I’m taking.  By the second day, I was able to swim freestyle with side breathing.  Now, I can only swim 25m at a time then have to take a brief rest then swim another 25m, but after that 50m I need about 5 mins rest.  The goal though was to learn to swim with side breathing and I accomplished that.  Now I need to work on my endurance.

In running and biking, I did the same distances as the previous week.  11 miles running and 60 miles biking.  I did my second ever brick session today, running 1.5 miles right after my 30-mile bike ride.  Legs felt like jelly, but that was to be expected.  By about the 0.75-mile mark, my legs felt fine in that they didn’t feel like jelly, but they were still tire though, but more like the tired feeling at the end of a long run.

Here is my week from TrainingPeaks:

 

Goals For Next Week: I will keep the amount of running the same.  For the biking, I will add 5 miles to the long bike ride.  For swimming, I hope to log at least 200m for each of the 4 days of my swimming class with a stretch goal of reaching 400m on one of those days.

Bike Fit

Posted by Derek on in BikeGear, Gear

Today I had my first bike fit done at PlayTri. When I first got my bike, I did all the adjustments myself.  I was quite happy and I’ve been riding on the bike for the last 3 months without any issue when used as a road bike, but I recently installed some clip-on aero bars had some discomfort when riding it for the first time. I wanted to have a proper tri fit.

The bike fit was the Retul system.  I didn’t expect to have to do so much riding, but in the end I was happy with the result.  My seat got raised a bit and I did replace the saddle with a tri specific saddle.  It was much more comfortable when I was in the aero position.

I have my long ride tomorrow of 30 miles and that will be a good test.  We’ll see how long I can stay in the aero position. I’ve only ridden two others times this past week with the aero bars.  I think I spent perhaps 40-50% of the time in the aero position on the first 15-mile ride, but only 20% of the time on the second 15-mile ride due to the discomfort.

I have also done the 30-mile ride for last 3 weekends so I have a good baseline for my power and speed to compare against.

Learning to Swim

Posted by Derek on in SwimTraining, Training

If I got into a pool and was told to swim to the other side, I can do it, and I can even swim back, but was I swimming?  I guess it depends on how you define swimming.  If it is simply to propel oneself, then yes, I was swimming!  But, the way I swim is not typical.  It would be a combination of freestyle with my face out of the water the entire time and a lot of splashing, a little breast stroke when I got tired, and flipping over on my back and making what my wife calls snow angles in order to move.

None of my strokes were normal.

When I was doing my Divemaster Scuba certification, one of the requirements was to swim 400m.  You got various points depending on how long you took with 5 points for under 9 mins and 1 point for at least finishing.  I only got the 1 point having taken around 18 mins to swim the 400m.   At the time I was doing 10-mile long runs, but I was exhausted after that 400m swim.

I know this will not work for any kind of long distance triathlon.  So in order to accomplish my goal, I had to take some swimming lessons to learn to swim properly so I can be more efficient in the water.  I found a 2-week beginner class that started this past Monday and after just a couple days, I can now swim freestyle with side breathing.

Now, I’m not breaking any speed records and I’m tired after just 50m, but at least I have the technique down and now I just need to work on building up my endurance.