Friday 15 October 2010

Lane Swimming, Pilates and Crawl.

Today I went to a 'lane' swimming session, rather than a 'general' swim. I have avoided the lane sessions in the past, in case I looked foolish and far too unfit to be swimming amongst real swimmers!

In fact, it was so much easier, not having to avoid the people not swimming and having some guidance to direction, by the lane divides made things easier. There were four lanes, 'chatter' lane, 'slow' lane, 'jogger' lane and 'fast' lane. I chose to swim in the slow lane, where I found I was swimming at a similar speed as those in the jogger lane, but as I tended to pause in between lengths, it felt more appropriate to swim in the slower lane and overtake people. (There were only two others swimmers in my lane.)

I managed to swim four non-consecutive laps of front crawl. Felt like a huge achievement!. Started off with full bi-lateral breathing (stroke-stroke-stroke/breath) but by the end of the length I had to revert to breathing every second stroke, as I was quite out of breath. And I have no doubt the stroke was quite sloppy and inefficient. I remembered to use the tiles on the bottom of the pool to keep my line as I had been nervous about bumping into, or swimming out of my lane, but I had no problem with this.

I need to buy a swimming cap though. Had forgotten how difficult it is to swim crawl with longer hair (and it was tied up!)

So statistics for today:

Pool: Rothwell
Distance: 36 lengths
Stroke: Breaststroke and four lengths of front crawl.
Time: Approx half hour (wasn't really time keeping).

I also added a class of Pilates into my regime this week. It was quite a large class (17 of us) at the local leisure centre, and wasn't as good as the Pilates I have attended in the past, but it was free (or at least covered by my 'fitness and swim card'), and although my core muscles were quite weak, I remembered a lot of the things I have learnt in the past, and felt I had a good workout. Hoping to continue with this once per week.....

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