The Backstroke Lane

Rio 2016 for paratriathlon? That's the plan. First stop, 2013 Paratriathlon World Championships in London. It's our first Australian Paratriathlon National Champs this year - we're quite a few years behind the UK, US and Canada that way. I didn't know the Paralympics were a thing as a teenage swimmer in the 80s - joined a club at 13, gave up 2 years later thinking I was crap. My 80s PBs are semi-crap by the standards of today, but looking at finals times from 1992 (when they switched to the current classification system), it seems I was one of the fastest in the world back then. We just weren't training like Paralympians do today (ie like elite athletes). You can only get so far in junior development squads, or segregated disability land, training 3 times a week. I do practically all my kick sets kicking on my back, which allows me plenty of practice with my backstroke turn. Maybe that would work, even though your squad is mostly freestyle based? And there's nothing to stop me swimming backstroke for part of a speed set. Very few people in my squad are interested in form strokes, but the coaches would get what I was doing (they saw that race and they can do the same calculation I did re state champs - they've trained other people to the Paralympics in swimming, so the multi-disability race stuff makes sense to them).

Rio 2016 for paratriathlon? That's the plan. First stop, 2013 Paratriathlon World Championships in London. It's our first Australian Paratriathlon National Champs this year - we're quite a few years behind the UK, US and Canada that way. I didn't know the Paralympics were a thing as a teenage swimmer in the 80s - joined a club at 13, gave up 2 years later thinking I was crap. My 80s PBs are semi-crap by the standards of today, but looking at finals times from 1992 (when they switched to the current classification system), it seems I was one of the fastest in the world back then. We just weren't training like Paralympians do today (ie like elite athletes). You can only get so far in junior development squads, or segregated disability land, training 3 times a week. I do practically all my kick sets kicking on my back, which allows me plenty of practice with my backstroke turn. Maybe that would work, even though your squad is mostly freestyle based? And there's nothing to stop me swimming backstroke for part of a speed set. Very few people in my squad are interested in form strokes, but the coaches would get what I was doing (they saw that race and they can do the same calculation I did re state champs - they've trained other people to the Paralympics in swimming, so the multi-disability race stuff makes sense to them).