I did a bit of reading around to figure out what might help me to breathe better and get less breathless.  I have been getting to the end of 50m with my lungs burning but my arms and legs feeling fine. So I did some reading, and learned that we terrestrial animals are built EXACTLY wrong for hydrodynamics, haha. Great. We naturally swim like dogs and deer, head up out of the water so we don’t drown, thrashing our 4 little clubs of limbs wildly enough that we don’t sink.  Yup prior to this adventure that was my swimming philosophy exactly, somewhat akin to this:

Me swimming a week ago

Turns out that’s not so efficient. No wonder I was tired.  So I read up about how to work with the water and gravity and stuff instead of fighting and thrashing, and it was all very exciting.  We should be aiming to be more like Dolphins, who are 80% effiecient at propelling themselves compared to our natural 3%. Which is more than dolphins should be able to by their structure alone, which means they employ some tricky little tactics that reduce drag and let their back quarters draft behind their front.

Pretty cool.  Like this guy:

So I thought I’d give that a go.  I looked up some gliding and balance and propulsion stuff and tried to remember that when I went to the pool. I warmed up with 2 lengths of gliding, then 2 lengths or superman gliding breast stroke.  Then I decided today was freestyle day so I did 16 lengths freestyle all up.  I practiced the streamlining drills and stuff periodically, and it made a huge difference.  Amongst those 16 I did several easy 50m and then I had my first moment of feeling like I could turn around and keep going when I hit the wall. I made it to halfway which makes that my next personal best… 75m!

But wait, there’s more.  I then managed a couple more 50m, and then turned around once more, got to half way, swallowed some water and stood up for long enough to cough twice then carried on all the way to the end.  So pretty much 100m since coughing is not as helpful as breathing when you take a rest.

The last one I made it 2 full 50s then turned around once more and got just over 1/4 of the way down the pool again I reckon, so about 115m.

Then went inside and did 10 lengths of the indoor pool, 6 freestyle, 2 breast stroke and 2 backstroke.  Mean!

1.25km in just under 1 hour this time, so I must be getting either faster or more efficient/fitter so that I don’t have to rest as long in between.  That is promising!

So to summarise, don’t swim like this:

Because you’ll feel like this:

Instead swim like this:

Bye now.