Stroke count?

The last couple of days I started using SPL counts on my backstroke to help me not crash the wall on the side without backstroke flags. It's still not fool-proof, I get into a rhythm and 20 seems about right, but every now and again I'll be at 18 and "sense" I need to turn... sure enough. Yesterday I was doing 200s and 20 sPL was the magic number, today I was doing 100s and the SPL was all over the place. I'm new to back stroke, is this fluctuation (17-20) normal? Should I be aiming for more consistency? My stroke count is all over the place, but depending on the speed/number of SDKs I'm doing, it usually falls into the same ballpark given similar variables. For example, my stroke count increases each 25 for the first 75 of the 200 back in a race, but then *usually* stays the same for the rest of the race. All that said, I never go by stroke count when I'm swimming, whether in a race or in practice--I always just go based on feel and the flags.

The last couple of days I started using SPL counts on my backstroke to help me not crash the wall on the side without backstroke flags. It's still not fool-proof, I get into a rhythm and 20 seems about right, but every now and again I'll be at 18 and "sense" I need to turn... sure enough. Yesterday I was doing 200s and 20 sPL was the magic number, today I was doing 100s and the SPL was all over the place. I'm new to back stroke, is this fluctuation (17-20) normal? Should I be aiming for more consistency? My stroke count is all over the place, but depending on the speed/number of SDKs I'm doing, it usually falls into the same ballpark given similar variables. For example, my stroke count increases each 25 for the first 75 of the 200 back in a race, but then *usually* stays the same for the rest of the race. All that said, I never go by stroke count when I'm swimming, whether in a race or in practice--I always just go based on feel and the flags.