The tyre of doom!

Swim Training: Tuesday 9th October 2012

It has often been said that the best way to improve at any sport is to train with people who are better than you - which is easy for me to achieve with swimming!  

Tonight's session with the ATHelite crowd was great fun, although I must confess that instead of being scared by the unknown (as per last week) I was scared about what was coming up…

And there it was, written in white board marker on the tiled walls of the pool… the tyre of doom. An inconspicuous rubber band used to tie the ankles together, preventing you from kicking your legs.  If your swimming form isn't good - this piece of elastic will hunt you out and drag you down to the bottom of the pool. Hmmm, I wonder where I ended up ;-)

Now, I'm hoping that my talent at sinking is not 100% down to a lack of natural talent but the fact that I've lost close to 12kg over the last 18 months (7 kg over the last 6 months) and now my natural buoyancy has been reduced…

Now density is defined as mass / volume.

Muscle is more dense than fat and given I've shed a load of mass and reduced my body fat down to about 12-14% I'm hoping that this can (partly) explain my leg's ability to sink like  concrete ducks…. Hmmmm, I think a problem solving exercise for my Higher Physics class (currently on properties of matter) may be in order  ;-)

Anyhow, after 20 meters or so on my first lap with the elastic band the inevitable happened - my legs dropped almost to the bottom of the pool and I may have been faster trying to walk underwater than swim. A second pool buoy helped a little as did placing them closer to my ankles to provide maximum uplift.  Eventually I got the hang of it and managed to complete the sets as required… but boy oh boy (or should that be buoy oh buoy?!) was I happy to untether my ankles!!

2km of swimming and drills despatched in 45 mins and then we decided to do a relay - each team member doing a 25 m sprint. I was pipped by finger-tips by my better half (although I had demanded a Steward's enquiry) - not content with this misery, my calves cramped up just to let me know they exist. Funny, since sparrows have mocked my for the size of my calves, I didn't realise they could burn so much after just 25m. Much stretching has been done since my return from the pool… but they're still letting me know they've been worked this evening!

Right, off to load up the glycogen stores with some rice and one fantastic curry!