Try Tri Again

A number of years ago, I did a couple of sprint triathlons for fun with friends, both individually and as a team. Now, some ten years plus later, I'm training to do another one in a few weeks. While I don't have high expectations, I have personal goals I hope to meet or beat, particularly in swimming.

I've always found that despite being in decent running and biking shape, swimming would leave me wiped out. I thought at first that maybe it was I'm fairly lanky, but that doesn't fly as top swimmers are also fairly streamlined. That meant I was probably in need of corrections to my technique. This is where the fun started. As I began to research swimming technique, I came across a number of articles and training clips breaking down the strokes of elite swimmers and what they did to make themselves more efficient. Here are a few that were helpful:

- Swim Taller
- Swimming in Circles:
- Of Gravity and Air:
- Total Immersion site clips. Chose your bandwidth, then choose appropriate clip samples to view, such as Use Your Head to Swim Better, Freestyle Made Easy, and The Secrets of Freestyle

The combination of the total immersion notion of maintaining a horizontal body position by keeping your head aligned with your spine by looking down and front quadrant swimming have made a big difference in the effort required to swim. While I don't think that there's enough time to noticeable speed improvements by my triathlon date, these techniques are definitely helping me swim more efficiently which will leave more energy for biking and running. If you swim and haven't heard of any of these ideas before, check them out as there will likely be at least one thing new for you to try. For more seasoned triathletes, there may be some tips you find helpful in the ACTIVEdotCOM series of videos, such as this one.

Some great things about this upcoming race are that it's short enough to make training reasonable and it's been a great incentive for me to get into good shape.