Breakthrough?

Just returned from a good swim workout. 400 units of warm-up and then 400-350-300-250-200-150-100 all at T-Pace w/ 50 units of easy kicking inbetween each interval, followed by a 700 unit cool down.

I say units because the pool I swim in is very "fast". Not fast like the pool in the water cube in Beijing with all the technological advances to make swim times faster, I mean "fast" as in short, so that's why I call them units. Nobody really knows how long the pool is, probably 23 yards. In other posts I'll probably talk about actions supporting short term goals supporting long term goals, and continuing to swim at this pool violates all of that, but I just can't bring myself to go to the other pool with the bad locker room.

Anyway, I'm not a good swimmer, so I try to swim frequently and mostly pay attention to deconstructing my stroke and getting it right before putting in long intense workouts. This year I knew that the # 1 thing I needed to do was get a coach, and while I still don't have one, I did get one "clinic" when I was in AZ.

One pointer cascaded into three or four things changing and suddenly I'm saving seconds per 100 units... like a puzzle falling into place. Still have lots of work to do, but it's good to finally start "feeling" the water and move at a decent 1:23/100 units pace.

In honor of finally improving, today's pic is from the swim start at the DMZ half Ironman, where if I hope to improve on last year's finish, I'm going to have to be able to swim with the lead pack.