I would like to state that the training is going well and is on schedule but that wouldn't be true. You see about a month ago I erected a baby gate at the top of the stairs. The following day I forgot it was there, fell clean over it and down the stairs. The injured toe was in agony and still isn't right. Anna laughed that I didn't look at that moment much like a potential Ironman and as I cursed my toe at the bottom of the stairs and I guessed she was right.
So for the last fours weeks all I have been doing is swimming. This is improving however and significantly. To improve my style and speed courtesy of a lot of Youtube videos I've learnt the following is important to do and keep doing :
# kick from your hips, relax your legs and point your toes. This instruction still feels counter intuitive. Physiologically I can't believe that it is possible to point your toes whilst relaxing your legs so at the moment I'm settling for the former in the belief that it's more important than the latter. The kick from the hips bit I do get and it does make a big difference.
# pull hard through the second part of the stroke underwater and continue pulling until your hand exits the water past your hips. This I've decided is where the power and momentum is. Get this right and your velocity increases big time.
# hand shape must be exactly right for the best pull. I'm still working on this but the angle of the hand whilst underwater is clearly critical and I need to give this some more Google and wet time.
For the past month I've been up to 50 lengths each working day doing 100 lengths on one of them only. 75 lengths is the distance for the Ironman 70.20 swim and half the distance of the full race.
I need to get on my bike and back in my jogging shoes and plan to do just this as soon as my toe morphs from black to white through the 50 shades in between and lets me walk again properly.
