Some notes on swimming lessons

That’s right, two blog posts today. That should make up for months of not posting, no?

I actually had my first swimming lesson this evening. The instructor is not, in fact, the heinous bitch who hates me, so that was good news.

I had originally signed up for Adult 3, which might have been a little more advanced than I actually needed, but as it turned out, Adult 3 was cancelled on the grounds that I was the only person who signed up for it, and I got bounced back to Adult 2.

Adult 2 was overpopulated by my presence, and some other woman got really, really huffy about that, and completely steamrolled the instructor’s suggestions that she stay for this week and give the gym a chance to come up with a solution. The woman got totally bitchy and walked out on the class to go demand her refund. Uh, good riddance, I guess.

The remaining three people in the class were two youngish girls who are really just learning to swim. They’ve had a couple of rounds in Adult 1, so they can swim, sorta, and are too advanced for ‘and now you lay back on my hand and float while I hold you’ of Adult 1, but they don’t really feel particularly comfortable in the water. Go them for making the effort.

Go them doubly for telling me they thought I was a great swimmer and they were really impressed. That made me feel good about myself, so yay! I told them I just had a few years experience on them, what with having taken my first swimming lessons when I was 2, and all.

The other guy in the class can swim, but not with his face in the water. I don’t know if that’s a nervous thing or just a bad habits learned over many years thing.

Basically, there are only three levels of adult lessons, versus about 12 levels of kids lessons. So Adult 1 is ‘I do not know how to float or blow bubbles’ and Adult 3 is ‘I am a very a good swimmer, and I’d like to swim further and faster’ and Adult 2 is absolutely everything in between. There’s no way the four of us would all be in the same class if we were kids swimming at the levels we swim at, but I guess the demand for adult lessons probably doesn’t justify the additional striations.

I did make a little progress on kicking, I think. I found it quite exhausting, so that may be part of the problem — I may just need to build up more endurance at kicking since it takes so much more energy.

I need to remember my lap timer for next week, since having the instructor time laps for me really doesn’t work — she has too much else going on to watch the clock.

I stayed after and swam a single set of 14 laps, since the pool was open for Adult Lane Swim after my lesson ended anyway.

Why I’m taking swimming lessons, a handy chart.

	2010-08-26
Crawl	00:28.75
Crawl w/ Kick	00:37.23
Crawl	00:38.22
Backstroke	00:55.59
Crawl	00:36.86
Crawl w/ Kick	00:49.13
Crawl	00:37.75
Backstroke	00:59.51
Crawl	00:38.80
Crawl w/ Kick	00:47.84
Crawl	00:35.28
Backstroke	00:56.64
Crawl	00:36.84
Crawl	00:42.86
Break	01:33.44
Crawl	00:30.52
Crawl w/ Kick	00:42.52
Crawl	00:39.19
Backstroke	00:52.52
Crawl	00:37.60
Crawl w/ Kick	00:45.13
Crawl	00:40.01
Backstroke	00:58.65
Crawl	00:37.53
Crawl w/ Kick	00:46.40
Crawl	00:41.97
Backstroke	00:56.80
Crawl	00:40.97
Crawl	00:41.88
Break	01:53.86
Crawl	00:32.35
Crawl	00:39.64
Crawl	00:43.96
Backstroke	00:55.00
Crawl	00:38.27
Crawl	00:43.66
Crawl	00:42.42
Backstroke	00:55.62
Crawl	00:40.13
Crawl	00:43.39
Crawl	00:42.42
Backstroke	00:55.97
Crawl	00:40.52
Crawl	00:45.40
Break	00:49.53
Crawl	00:35.01
Crawl	00:40.23
Crawl	00:40.65
Backstroke	00:55.08
Crawl	00:38.32
Crawl	00:45.39
Crawl	00:43.60
Crawl	00:50.60
Crawl	00:41.66
Crawl	00:44.40
Crawl	00:39.41
Backstroke	00:55.58
Crawl	00:42.67
Crawl	00:43.45

So, okay, the handy chart probably isn’t actually all that handy. But a detailed reading of it will reveal why I’m taking swimming lessons, despite the fact that the chart covers off my ability to swim a kilometer.

I swim in sets of 14 laps (250m give or take), with backstroke laps on the 4th, 8th and 12th laps. Those are essentially resting laps, and they’re quite slow, and I don’t care.

More interesting is the crawl laps. Normally when I do front crawl, I swim arms only. But sometimes, on the return laps that aren’t backstroke, I try kicking. And those laps are much slower than the arms only laps, which is, uh, bad.

Now that return lap is almost always the slowest of the crawl laps — I think that mainly has to do with the currents in the water, but it may also have a bit to do with how the turns get timed into the laps. But even taking that into account, in the first two sets of the time above, I was kicking on my returns, and in the last two, I wasn’t.

In the first half, that return lap was an average of 6 seconds slower than the one that followed it. In the second half where I was never bothering to kick, the return lap was only an average of 2 seconds slower than the one that followed it. 4 seconds, when you’re talking lap times between 30 and 45 seconds is a fairly significant percentage.

So, that’s why I’m taking swimming lessons. At the very least, I’d like to be able to kick my legs and not have it hinder my progress.

My long term swimming goal is to get my crawl speed up to 50y/min, which is what’s considered ‘moderate’ swimming speed. I don’t think I’ll be able to get there if I continue to swim arms only. It’s just under 30y/min in the set above, but would be a little better without the kicked laps.