A "Short" Night at the Pool

Jess and Christina were back from DC, where they both did terrific:

Jess finished the DC Marathon in 3:55:17, chip time, 636/1387 overall, and 16/63 in her division, clocking 8:59 per mile.

Christina finished the DC Half Marathon in 1:33:33, chip time, 156/2640 overall, and 11/236 in her Division, clocking 7:09 per mile.

But here's the really interesting thing: while they were there they had access to the FBI's training facility pool and its underwater cameras, where they had their swimming strokes filmed and analyzed by one of the instructors. Jess learned that she was turning her fingers up slightly as she extended her arm, which was increasing resistance. She also learned that her arms, instead of going straight forward, should be angled more steeply, to get to the undisturbed water in front of and underneath her body. (At least I think that's what she said.) They both were able to correct flaws in their strokes and shorten their Strokes Per Length (SPL)by about 15%, meaning they were more efficient in the water.

They also noted that they while they were more efficient in their stroking, they were a little slower. As we Total Immersion fans know, the trick to increasing speed is decrease our SPL while increasing our Stroke Rates (SR), and, most important, to find the perfect balance between the two. The tricky thing for those of us who are not elite swimmers is that as we try to increase our SR, our form tends to break down, and we do more churning and less gliding. It's amazing how technical swimming can be.

Finally, to really, really get faster, you not only have to balance SPL with SR, you have to add power to your stroke. I'm afraid this all may beyond my abilities, as I am only mortal, and far, far from elite. But, what the hell, I'll talk to them some more next week, see what else they learned, and I try it out. Can't hurt, right?.

Coach also added a new 200 yard freestyle drill, shortening the time between sprints as follows: a length up at 50%, followed by a sprint back at 100%, repeated 4 times.

Our swim time was shorter, too. We had a good turn out, with all the women there, and me - Mike was working, Gil had to take care of a project at home and Steve couldn't make it. We all had a lot of catching up to do, we congratulated everyone on their recent accomplishments, and we were all pretty interested in Jess' and Christina's experiences with the FBI. Dodie was back, too, and had just had her stitches pulled. With all the talk-talk-talk, we didn't get started with warm-ups until 7:40.

Finally, our class time was shorter. Class is supposed to go from 7:30 until 8:15, but early on, Dodie asked if we could go until 8:30. Coach, being vary gracious, accommodated her request, and made sure his lesson plans kept us busy for the full hour. However, there is now a life saving class which meets at 8:15, meaning we have to abandon two of our reserved lanes at that time. We do get to keep the third lane, for the extra 15 minutes, though. As usual, Kelly took the time after class to swim extra laps, joined this week by Jess.

So, it was, indeed, a "short" swim night (you didn't think I was going to make jokes about the diminutive stature of my teammates, did you?)

Once again, the best part of the evening was Dodie - when she learned that we were losing 15 minutes off the end of our class, she immediately said to Coach, "Well, we will just have to start at 7:15, when the earlier class ends!" And who knows, maybe we will.