This is the first of two posts I'm putting up today (the other is mostly unrelated).
Overall, I'm feeling great in the water, almost as good as I was in the buildup during the last few weeks before Nationals in April! My fly isn't back to where it was then, but that's perfectly understandable since I was doing a LOT of fly then and haven't been doing all that much lately.
Weight: This time last season, I was pushing 215. When I weighed myself Monday morning, I was 182.8. I hit 179 at the peak of my training in April, and given that I haven't been training near as hard as that for quite some time now, I'm quite happy with it! Of course, this is with my sometimes spastic scale, so I don't know how accurate it actually is, but relatively speaking I seem to be close to what I was at my best in the spring.
Water feel: I was still really pretty cruddy in the water last October. I felt like a bloated whale and was swimming two lanes down from where I swim now. I was having to push to hold 1:30 for multiple 100s free, and now I can hold 1:20s ad infinitum without breaking a sweat at all. Back then I constantly had to fight the water, and now I feel like I'm just sliding through it. I think it's a combination of me being substantially smaller than I was then and me now being in much better shape. Whatever it is, it's great to go from feeling very out of place in the water to being back to feeling like it's where I belong!
Butterfly: No comparison at all! Last October, I was struggling to make it through a 50 fly without my arms falling off. My speed was abominable and my endurance was right around 0. Fast forward to today, and while my endurance isn't at its April heights, 50s are no problem. I currently have to push for a 100, but only start to feel it at the last 25. The next month or so should help out with that. Again, my speed has improved a ridiculous amount. It hurt...a LOT...to try and break :40 in my 50 fly in practice last year, and now I can routinely break :35 without really pushing, and can hit a :29 or :30 at a sprint from a push. Night and day difference!
Backstroke: Even more of an improvement than in fly! I remember not being able to crack a 1:30 in the 100 back during a main set without sprinting last October, and now I can cruise to a 1:20-1:25 without breaking much of a sweat. Pushing hard, I can hit around a 1:12 or so. Still plenty of room for improvement, but I'm doing so much better than I was a year ago!
Breaststroke: My breast felt shitty last October, but to be honest, it's felt that way ever since I stopped being a breaststroker 13 or 14 years ago. It still doesn't feel great, but the Rebecca Soni-esque pull that Katie introduced me to over the summer has made it feel a lot better than the craptastic stroke it had been. I'll swim some breast events at one of the meets in the next month or so, just to see where I'm at.
Freestyle: Soooo much improvement! As I mentioned before, I had to push myself to make consecutive 100s on 1:30. Now I can hold 1:20 with no real expenditure of effort and can do at least a few consecutive 200s on 2:30 without having to kill myself. For a single 100 from a push, I can hit around 1:10 without having to sprint, although I have to push hard. In the spring I hit a couple 1:05s at a sprint from a push in the middle of practice (they were on 2:00, so I got lots of time to recover between them). Haven't tried that yet this season, but I'd imagine I'm right there timewise.
Overall, I feel much more natural in the water. Oh, sure, I still have to try hard to swim fast, but being in the water feels more like a natural state for me than it did a year ago. Can't complain!
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