Mental fortitude

It's amazing how much my mental swimming game has changed since highschool.  Back then, I was more or less equally opportunistic regarding all four strokes, although I liked swimming back the most in practice, followed closely by fly.  Free was just something I did a lot of--didn't have feelings for it either way.  And breast, well, it was just there.

Fast forward to the present, six and a half years later.  Back is still my favorite stroke to swim in practice, but I've come to really NOT like swimming a lot of free.  I know a big part of my anti-free attitude is because I'm in a pretty rough transition period regarding my technique, but my patience for swimming it doesn't extend much past a 200 at a time.

My appetite for fly has increased, as well.  While I used to enjoy swimming fly, and thought that long/big fly sets were no biggie, I never truly just enjoyed swimming it.  That's changing.  As I'm forcing myself swim more fly in practice (see my previous post for the reason why), I'm coming to enjoy swimming it in practice.  Admittedly, in the week since I started swimming more fly at practice, I have yet to do more than several fly 50s back to back.  For instance, last night's practice had a main set that was several rounds of a set of 25s, 50s, and 75s.  I did most of the 25s fly, the 50s fly/back, and the 75s fly/back/fly.  While I don't have near the endurance in fly that I do in back or free yet, I've come to enjoy swimming fly more than free.  And in practice, at least, my fly speed when I do short sprints isn't too far off my free speed.  I just feel more relaxed when I do fly (shoulder endurance notwithstanding) at this point than when I do free.  Fly is also quite a bit less of a mental effort than free, since the fly technique feels quite natural at this point, versus the free technique that still requires a fair amount of active thinking.  Quite peculiar.

While I don't yet have the mental fortitude to be blase about doing long distances fly, I am inching and squinching my way there.  Just a month or two ago, my shoulders would hurt after doing more than a few 25s fly and I kinda dreaded doing those distances.  Now I look forward to the short distances and don't have any shoulder fatigue unless I'm doing either longer distances or a bunch of short distance sprints.  By the time the next meet rolls around on January 15th in Annapolis, I should be at the point where a 100 fly is a piece of cake, and by the first meet in February (Feb. 11-12 in Richmond), the 200 should also be a welcome event.
If this continues, it bodes well for my becoming a full time flyer and part time backstroker!