More Flip Turns

I've had two more swim workouts since starting doing Flip Turns, and the big guy still is having some troubles. I can tell this is going to be a process. At the shallow end today I missed the wall at least 5 times (did 50m laps today) - boy that takes the wind out of your sails quick! I just could not get the timing down, until I finally noticed something. Every time I did a good turn (well, one in which my feet hit the wall) I was able to just barely see the black cross on the wall before excecuting my turn. I swim with my head pointing straight at the bottom of the pool - so using that cue for the second half of my 1500m swim today, I was able to flip with very few miss-que's.

I wish I had better results to report to those of you still not flipping yet. I have not given up on flips, as much as I dread them. At least in the long lane (50m) swim, I have plenty of time to think about swimming before breaking concentration and thinking about what I'm going to do about flipping. Yesterday I did 1,400 yds in a 25m pool - that was a challenge! Flip, take a couple of strokes, not enough to get into a rythem, and then try and flip again.

It's not all bad, however. Today's 1500m swim took exactly 32:41 - a new PR for me, at a 1:59 pace per 100 yds. I'll be dangerous once I get these turns down. If all goes well, I have a really good chance of breaking the 10,000 yd mark for the week, which would be another PR for swimming for me. The next piece of advise I'll use from Coach Mike (admittedly "free" advise, for which I'm grateful and feeling a little bit guilty) will be to add 100m of hard pulling to every 500m, so that I get 4 "sprints" in every 2k. I worked that into my bike yesterday and was very pleased to see how quickly my HR went from 165 - 170 back down to 130. Good Stuff!