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The first workout of my 12 week plan has come and gone, though not necessarily in the manner I intended it.

For Valentine's day I bought Clare a day out horse riding, which Clare duly booked and which we headed to this morning. It was a 2 hour drive away. We got up at 7 (an unholy hour on a Sunday) and headed to the outskirts of Reading. Clare had a fantastic time. The experience ended at 4pm and we started to head home. The gym closes at 8 so considering the fact that there was a hell of a lot of traffic I was worried I wouldn't have made it in time for my swim. As a matter of fact I did make it time, if a bit flustered.

The workout was focused on technique this time and I was only due a 1000m swim. My primary priority was stroke length and the number of strokes per length. By lengthening my stroke (reaching forward at the beginning of each stroke and letting myself 'flow') I brought the number of strokes per length down to 29-31. It wasn't easy and it wasn't comfortable, therefore it was disappointing. Lengthening each stroke felt a lot harder work than my usual 'less efficient' strokes. After a 250m warm-up the main body of my workout consisted of 7 sets of 100m. The first length of each set was unfailingly 28-29 strokes long. By the fourth length my arms were feeling heavy (which was surprising, disappointing ... and many further adjectives to that effect) and the stroke number degenerated to 31-32.

700m done and a 150 metre warm-up punctuated by alternate breathing exercises ... again, uncomfortable and punctuated by a certain amount of water swallowing and spluttering.

in summary, 1.1k in total, but a bit of demoralisation. This session has absolutely convinced me that I need some swimming coaching. I pick up my wetsuit next saturday and I've found some open water technique coaching sessions about 45 mins drive away. They're on Saturday morning at an ungodly 7am so I'll need to be up and out of the house by 6am but a couple of sessions should well be worth the sacrifice. In the meantime, I'll stick at my swimming sessions and try to keep lengthening my stroke, developing more power, and breathing on both sides. It'll make the swim sessions more arduous, but noone said this was supposed to be easy.