It’s been about 3 months since I started swimming on a regular basis, I figured it was time to write a self-congratulatory post to help keep the motivation up.
Hit a couple of milestones last week:
- First ever 600m (12 × 50m) non-stop. A nice achievement considering I couldn’t complete a single lap at the start.
- Personal best average pace of 2:43/100m on breaststroke (the only stroke I know, lol)
- New swim trunks whose debut coincided with the new the PB average pace ☝️. To be honest, it’s just nice not having my old ones threatening bail at the first hint of any sudden motion.
The thing that I’m finding the most challenging at the moment is my perception of my velocity and how much distance I am covering with each stroke. It is surprisingly difficult compared to running (okay, jogging) or cycling. So far I’ve tried tracking the tiles of the pool floor; I’ve also tried observing the depth of the brief vortex that forms between my hands and my face right after a kick.
Most recently, I’ve started noticing¹ the sensation of water dragging on my skin during the glide. The logic is simplistic – the greater the dragging sensation, the faster I must be moving. To corroborate, the sensation is most prominent right after the kick, and peters off from there. So, maximising the sensation should coincide with greater velocity, right?
In the process of writing this post, I’d flipped and flopped between whether this sensation was a useful indicator of velocity, or merely useful for assessing my acceleration from each kick. Turns out I was onto something. Drag (or fluid resistance, in my case) is a function of velocity, so there you go!
¹ Likely a result of no longer being fully-occupied with coordinating my breath as well as achieving some speed threshold for these sensations to be noticeable.