Swim Practice

As I mentioned, when people ask which event I'm most nervous about I typically answer "all of them." However I do have to admit the 1 mile open water swim is slightly intimidating. A note about swimming. I did play waterpolo in high school- however it was only for one year, it was only on the "novice" team, and I wasn't exactly a star player (although I could always be counted on to cheer loud from the sidelines). We would swim a lot at practice, but that's pretty much been the extent of my swimming experience. Luckily I'm surrounded by friends who are fairly experienced and have offered help me improve! Yesterday my best friend Rachel (who happens to be a former swim instructor) came with me to the Bay Club pool and gave me some tips to help improve my stroke and my form. HUGE help, and I noticed a difference immediately. After just one lesson I noticed I was going faster and had a stronger kick as well as a better stroke. My friend Caroline has also offered to help me, as she teaches swim lessons once a week at Bay Club. In addition to this support, my roomates Helen and Annie are former CAL swimmers (Annie helped me decipher the workout drills outlined in our training calendar), and my friend Megan Coughlin's older sister Natalie is a world famous gold medal bearing olympic athlete who has set several world records (her online tips are extremely helpful!)

This weekend we had our first coached swim practice (we swam in an outdoor pool in San Anselmo- oh heyyyyy one-piece tan lines) and there were three levels of ability. I chose to swim with Group 1, but looking back I probably would have been able to hang with Group 2. Judging by this picture of Erin and I in the pool however it probably makes sense we were in the remedial swimming group (I look... "special"). Next week we'll have a 10 min time trial, and based on how many laps we accomplish within the 10 min timeframe they'll place our ability level based on that. For practice today we did a bunch of drills and spent a lot of time on our form in the water. After the swim we did some running on the track and then some core exercises.

For the race, I'll have to swim the equivalent of about 64 laps but in open water (yikes!) We'll be practicing in Aquatic Park come July to get used to open water swimming.

Looking forward to more swimming, more instruction, and more improvement!