End of term

I had my last swimming lesson before the summer recess, when the pool at work is closed for maintenance (which is just as well because it's starting to smell of farts I noticed today).

Now we are really down to details. Of course all the usual culprits are still there - the dropped left elbow, the uncoordinated and shallow kick, the too-deep catch and so on - but they are getting better every time. For my own benefit more than anything else, I'm noting down the two faults Luis pointed out to me today.

The first is that I initiate the catch on my left side while I am still breathing with my head to the right. This means that my left shoulder starts off too deep in the water and the body rotation is excessive, making it harder to cleanly extract my left arm at the end of the stroke. By just holding my left arm out a tad longer and making sure my head is already looking down when my right hand enters the water seemed to correct this.

The second fault is to do with the position of my hands as they enter the water. They tend to be quite tense and are tilted slightly downwards so that the thumbs stick up. This makes it harder to have a high elbow (and Early Vertical Forearm) during the catch.

After the summer we will work on other strokes like breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly (gulp): apparently it has been more than demonstrated that mastering various swimming styles improves overall sensitivity to the water, the importance of which I have begun to grasp lately. In the meantime I will keep practising crawl and will hopefully get a chance to do a couple of open water swims on holiday...

...Which brings me to the fact that I will be away for two weeks in Vietnam from this Friday! I've already plotted out some runs around Hanoi, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh. Unfortunately it will be very hot and humid so running won't be much fun unless I can manage to get out of the door nice and early and, even then, I've read that the traffic and pollution are not particularly conducive either. Maybe I will hire a bike...