Daily Log June 16 2011 - Drama at the swimming pool. I really want to quit swimming

DAILY LOG 16 JUNE 2011 SWIM I have a love hate affair with swimming and tonight was the hate part of the relationship. I probably spend more time in the pool these days than I do on the bike or running. What frustrates me most is that I don't seem to be improving. It's almost as if everytime I take one step forward I take a giant leap back. Well, tonight I had a bit of a blow up during the triathlon swimming workout and I walked out of the pool and went home. All of us had to do some drills tonight. One of the most frustrating drills for me is the bilateral breathing drills where I'm supposed to breath from both my right as well as my left. So basically it breath on my right, take 2 strokes and then breath on my left. It sounds simple enough doesn't it. Well, it sure ain't easy for me. Everytime I take a breath on my left one of a few (or sometimes all) things happen:

I take in water instead of air
I don't take enough air so I have to immediately breath on my right
I sink

No matter what I do I can't get the hang of it. So during tonights bilateral breathing exercise I was thinking, 'what the heck am I doing wrong'? and 'what do I need to improve'?. And I don't know the answer to it. I was literally fuming with myself. As I was struggling with these thoughts, someone bumped into me and disrupted my swim. Under normal circumstances I would just brush it off. In fact I welcome it as it gives me the chance to learn how to maintain composure (I heard that it happens a lot during the start of the swim of a triathlon especially the Ironman Triathlons). But tonight was not norman and it gave me the perfect opportunity to pack it in. I literally stop in the middle of the pool and quite dramatically took off my goggles and swim cap and just walked to the side, climbed out of the pool, started packing my stuff and said to the swim coach, 'I've had enough tonight. Nothing is going right and I can't get it together. I'm going home'. I think I must have caused quite a stir as I can see at the corner of my eye people were wondering what was happening. So I went home and I felt like quitting. As I'm writing this post, I'm still trying to figure out what to do to get my swimming in order. I refuse to believe that I can't improve my swimming, If other people can do it, then I certainly can. I just need to figure out how to get it done. Right now I have to use every mental strategy that I've learnt to prevent myself from quitting. What I'm doing now obviously isn't working and I'd be a fool if I keep on doing the same thing and hope that I can get different results. Wasn't that Einstein's definition of insanity? Sigh.

BRICK BIKE AND RUN After the swim disaster I decided to redeem myself by doing a short but intense brick workout which consisted of a 20 minute bike ride followed by a 15 minute run both at a high intensity.

BIKE For the bike portion I did both a low cadence low gear workouts as well as high cadence high gear workout. Part of the intention is to get my legs used to both power on the pedal as well as a high turnover pedaling rate. I can feel the effect of this workout on my legs right now.

RUN I focussed on running fast tonight, wanting to start getting used to a higher pace as well as a correspondingly high heart rate. I managed a 2:17 lap which is fast for me. With less than 6 weeks to go, now is the time to push the intensity up so that I can be at my peak during the triathlon race day. Will it work? Haven't got a clue as it's my first time but all the books I read seems to think so. Let's see what happens eh?