Back into the pool and on the diet

After last week's debacle on the swim, I'm back in the pool and working hard. Trouble is, swimming is HARD for me. I'm signed up for a pricey private swim lesson hosted by SCAQ (Southern California Aquatics) and I'm hoping for some miracle form breakthrough that will suddenly drop my paces a good 10sec/100m, but honestly, I doubt that's going to happen.

I suspect a major part of my problem on the swim is actually less my technique, but my lack of swim power. This sounded strange to me, as my lats and back muscles were always very strong on weightlifting in my prior athletic life, but for sure, when it comes to the swim motion, I'm very weak compared to experienced swimmers.

For swimming, it seems that you can do interval after interval without risking injury due to the no-impact nature of the activity. A lot of folks on the triathlon forums recommend this, with sets of 100s through 400s at higher speed versus the running method of lower speed with intermittent speedwork. I have now adopted this style of training, and will see if it yields any benefit. I hope it will, as currently, I can cover the distance of 1+ miles no problem, but my swim pace is ungodly slow.

As for technical corrections, I'm sure I have several, but I doubt they are glaring anymore. I'm honestly having a hard time correcting any parts of my stroke now, which means that I've fixed all the obvious errors and thus will need a coach to fine-tune the stroke. I do find it easy to hold form at low relaxed paces, but my form degenerates somewhat at higher speeds, which requires more practice.

For the upcoming LA Olympic triathlon in September, which is my next goal race, I am hoping to maintain my bike ability as is, and I will willingly take a hit on my running speeds to improve much more on the swim. I will be willing to drop my 10k from my recent 42:50 to 44 or even 45 minutes in exchange for 5+ minutes improvement on the swim, or getting at least into the bottom third as opposed to the bottom quarter. This is in line with the triathlon mantra, "work on your weakness, but race your strength."

A few changes to my workout schedule will also be made. I'm not sure this will yield great results, and I suspect it may even slow me down a little, but I'm hoping it will be more bang for the buck in terms of time and intensity for Olympic distance races. I'm aiming to increase overall intensity with at least one run interval day, one run short-sprint day, and 1-2 bike interval days, coupled with 2-3 swim interval days. That's a lot of hard days, but I think with the x-training effect, it won't be too bad after the first week or two of suffering. This will hopefully increase my leg speed and leg power to perform optimally in the shorter-course races, which require somewhat different ability than the marathon training I used to do. Still, I'm a believer in high-volume training, and although I don't have the time to do it right now, I wish I could still maintain high running, swimming, and cycling mileage for optimal performance.

Finally, yes, it sounds strange, but I'm on a diet. I guess it would be hard to call it a real "diet", as I'm still eating more than would be recommended for a person my size, but I've decided to get my weight back down to my marathon racing weight or as close to it by the LA triathlon in September. 2 weeks ago, I weighed 151 in the morning, which is what I've been at for the past 6 months post stress-fx. However, at my peak speed last year, I was 141 (!!) without any crazy dieting. I'm not carrying much fat, but for sure, there's some extra fat hiding somewhere on my frame that can be shaved off for performance, as I've been eating probably 2-3x more than a typical person would eat. The past 2 weeks has been somewhat of a challenge to reduce portion sizes to at most 1.5x a typical one (instead of 2-4x typical, my norm) without detracting from my endurance training, but it's all coming together, and not too painfully at that. I'm now for sure down 2 lbs since 2 weeks ago, and I'm hoping it'll continue until I'm at my svelte racing weight come September.