Swimming

my swimming generally blows. I don't exactly hate it but of the three parts to a triathlon it is a distant third. I swam a sprint this summer that was not current aided and it took me forever, around 25 minutes. Very slow. It wasn't the slowest time, but it was close. By comparison my bike times are near the top third and my run times put me about two-thirds back(kind of slow but my running has gotten better since then). The better swimmer finished around 8 minutes ahead of me. That is in just a half mile swim. Yep, I am slow.

Anyway, I figure that I can do nothing but improve in the swim. One of the main lures to doing the Vikingman 70.3 Triathlon in Burley, ID is that the current cuts the swim time nearly in half. Thus the 1.2 mile swim is probably more like a .75 mile swim. That I am sure I will be able to do that, I just hope to do it better than I did before. When I did the Burley Olympic Spudman this past summer I basically just did the backstroke the whole time. I totally freaked out because of the open water. At least during the sprint, which was later in the summer, I didn't flip out nearly as bad and I was able to actually swim like a normal competitor, even if I was slow.

I am going to pick up a book and maybe a video to help with my swim. The book is by Total Immersion. I will let you all know if it works for me. Many people I know swear by it.