A few things I learned doing the 1 hr Postal swim last night
Former Member
At the last minute, I decided to skip the normal workout and do the swim.
I get going and I have a lane mate who I'm pretty much side by side with for the first few hundred yards until she broke away.
What was interesting was this. Her turns were a little faster. We were both doing open turns, but she seemed to gain half a length on me coming out of each one.
If I breathed bilaterally, I'd gain on her. I'd also gain on her if I breathed on the left (right is my normal side). But whenever I'd breath on the right, my pace would slow.
The problem is that if I breath on the left I get side stitches. If I breath bilaterally, I can start to get them but not as bad.
My questions are first and foremost, how do I use this information? Do I try to breath bilaterally more? Should that become the way I swim if I'm faster that way? Would I ever want to do an open water swim breathing bilaterally.
I can do flip turns. But they're not very good. I generally don't use them in distance because I seem to get tapped out. Since I never plan to race in a pool, I generally haven't worked on them much. Is there a technique for a fast open turn? Or should I do more flip turns?
Finally, would biking 30 miles that day affect how well I did in the hour swim that evening?
Former Member
In high school a friend told me yes, side stitches are from not exhaling completely. She showed me how to get rid of them (this was if we were running): bend over at waist and puff one huge puff of air out as you do so. Might have to repeat. It seemed to work.
Don't know how to translate this into a swimming bent-waist forceful exhale.
A trick I was taught for side stitches is to exhale completely, then pump your belly button in and out several times as if breathing fast (but not breathing at all, leaving the lungs empty). This might work for swimming, since it doesn't involve bending at the waist.
I just did this over lunch today. My wife wrote down 50 splits and stopped me at the hour. I used excel to fill in the cumulative times.
What did I learn? I must have learned how to swim distance at some point in the last couple of years. Back in high school, my 50 splits on a 500 used to go something like 26, 29, 33, 35, 38 -- in other words no kind of way to swim a 500. My splits on the 1 hour were consistent throughout finishing at 4060 yards. Of my 1000 splits, my last one was my fastest (but, geez it hurt!).
