Time to Start Swimming Again!

Since I've officially registered for at least one triathlon, I have a great motivator to start getting back into the pool on a regular basis. Today's attempt was in vain, and the ridiculously overweight pool-director told me that none of the lanes would be open (@ prime-time) due to swim lessons (also run by fat people). While I waited to see if enough people skipped swim class to let them open up a lane for me, I just dropped down every 60 seconds and did 25 push-ups. Nothing ridiculous to sap the strength just in case, but I guess it's better than nothing. In between sets of push-ups, I had ample time to stand around awkwardly on the pool-deck in one of these pondering some swim-related pieces of wisdom. I found a decent list HERE and just wanted to highlight a few of the bullets that struck a chord with me:

• Conditioning trumps drills - This can be very true if you're an experienced swimmer coming off of low-to-no swim exercise. Chances are, you're disciplined enough to get  back into decent swim shape w/o having to buckle down on relearning the basics. Of course, once your endurance is back up... then yeah, do your drills!
• Do longer main sets - For mental as much as physical endurance. Swimming 10x100m with 0:15 seconds rest in between is VASTLY different than swimming 2x500m.
• Increased swim fitness translates to B + R - Absolutely. If you're able to focus more on building muscle endurance rather than simply trying to keep your lungs from turning inside out on bike/run intervals, then you're one BIG step ahead of the game. Also, swimming is a cheap + easy way of tightening up your body and losing some bad weight. That cheap weight is 5-10 pounds that your knees don't have to worry about when they're pounding up and down the trails.
• Learn how to use your kick - Kick?... what's that? When rehabbing the knee, I got reeaaalllly comfortable using a pull-buoy so it seems as though I've got to learn to kick even more-so. Back when "I had it," I felt a great sense of rhythm where I was swimming from fingertips to toes. And, when you're in a short/normal pool (i.e. not the 50m Wilson Aquatic Center), that rhythm is greatly disrupted enough as it is.

Annnnd a couple of my own additions...

• Learn to breath on both sides - This seems like a no-brainer, but if you can't do flip-turns (anymore) or breath on both sides, then you had better pick at least one and figure it out.
• Start using the watch (again) - Using a watch was a HUGE tool I used to make sure I was keeping my efforts high. It kept me honest on all sets and constantly had me shooting for specific goals, rather than swimming aimlessly and convincing myself that I'm swimming much harder than I am. A watch is also great for my morale and is a very tangible way to recognize improvement.

In other news, my wife and I are dabbling in the South Beach Diet. We're not so much participating in the diet as much as we're trying to adapt the ideals. Overall, my appetite for crappy food has greatly diminished and the LBS are starting to drop off 0.1 at a time. That's not to say we don't stray off the path every now and again (a man needs a sturdy beer in the winter, after all, and what "diet" is going to allow that?!). I think this is more of a "big picture" thing (not a 3-week experiment) and a great way to help transition into our training for the 10-miler in April.