I got to use my new fancy dancy 'The Seal' goggles this morning. Yay! I was tired of wearing the little goggles that squish my eyes - I figure I'm getting old and one day the skin isn't going to bounce back and I'll have little squishy eyes forever....so I bought the Seal type.
These are the big type, that I will assume by the name, are designed after something similar to what a Navy Seal would wear???
The first thing I thought when I put them on was 'Holy Suction Batman!'. I pushed on them to create a seal and for a while I thought my eyeballs might suck out of their sockets, haha. I finally got a good seal going without the strain on the eyes. Phew. When I finally got my noggin in the water I was amazed at how much I could see! Thankfully this pool is clean so I didn't have to see any heeby geeby things...aka stray hairs. Gack!
We did a 400 m warm up, then went into a 500 m swim doing 75m swim/25 m drills. We then did some kicking 200 m with 25 m kick, 25 m hard kick. One of the guys in the class was swimming beside me in the other lane so it gave me incentive not to get left in his wake, haha. Noooo, I wasn't being competitive or anything...I just didn't want to be last. Tee hee. Needless to say I was sucking major wind trying to keep up.
Lastly, before watching a swim video, we did 5 x 50 m sprints. During the other freestyle swim Jen pointed out that my arm wasn't entering the water at the right angle. My arm was too straight. Hmm...this is how I'd been swimming the last two years....
So I started entering the water on an angle, likely around 45 degrees, then pulling. Holy hannah that felt weird!! I wasn't sure I was doing it correctly, but Jen watched me do a couple laps and said she could see an improvement in my speed right away. Hmm....it did seem that the tiles on the bottome of the pool were whizzing past a bit faster. (I can see them now with my new super duper goggles!)
The big test came when we did 5 x 50 m sprints. I had a send off time the same as one of the guys. The last while I noticed I have not been keeping up with him. This time though, was different. We started at the same time, but with my new improved stroke I was able to take the lead. Very cool. I was pooped at the end of the 5 sprints, but felt great.
The fun part now was taking off my goggles. Jen was killing herself laughing at me cause I was pulling and pulling on the goggles and the darn seal wouldn't break! Finally I wedged one of my fingers under the gasket and broke the seal. At least I know they shouldn't get kicked off in an open water swim! LOL.
Oh, and no squishy eyes! Just a really nice ring around my eye area.....sigh.
I don't suppose a photo of you wearing the spiffy new goggles would be forthcoming? Such goggles wouldn't do me any good, since I'm so shortsighted I have to look carefully to see if there is anyone else at the far end of the pool before I choose a lane.
ReplyDeleteThe stroke improvement is a great thing. It seems counter intuitive to put your hand in the water first, THEN stretch out pushing your hand along under water. But then you get a better pull with no air bubbles to ruin your grip on those slippery water molecules.
Next she'll have you taking one stroke, recovering, having both hands together for a fraction of a second out in front of you, then starting the next stroke with the other hand.
I think the idea is that when you enter your hand into the water,right around where your forehead is, at the same time you are ROLLING your body as you are pushing your hand through the water. When the roll is done, then you grab the water and pull. Don't forget the roll cause all your power is going to come from those shoulders and back and torso.
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