My biggest concern about the triathlon is the swimming. I've been swimming my whole life, but by "swimming" I really mean just flopping around in the ocean or sipping mai thai's at a swim-up bar. The last time I was ever required to swim laps would have been about 20 years ago at Camp Sea Gull.
So my training will focus on swimming – doing at least three swim sessions a week, if not more. I was all excited about my first session this week but was in for two pretty big shocks.
Shock #1
Let's start with the biggest shock of my first swim session: what I had to wear. Jammers. And as you can see, these are basically speedos with longer legs. O. M. G. no.
And why would I subject myself to this bit of torture? Well, swimming with regular trunks would be like pulling a parachute – double the work. Jammers make swimming a lot less work and since my goal is to swim the farthest with the least amount of effort, I bravely squeezed into these things and headed to the pool (I'll spare you the photos..nobody needs to see that).
shock #2
It was right after I started my first lap that I encountered my second shock. I was basically gasping for life just halfway down the pool. F'ing great. The swim portion of the sprint triathlon is 750 meters, or roughly 30 pool lengths, and I couldn't even make it half a pool length without dying.
Lessons learned
Lucky for me, I have awesome friends. My buddy @thetopstoryWYFF was there to help and he brought his GoPro camera. After some underwater filming, we realized a few things:
This is me not knowing what the hell I'm doing.
- We looked totally sketchy – me in my sausage casing of a swim suit while he followed me with a camera. Yeah..exactly. My discomfort level? Plutonium grade.
- Second, we learned after watching the footage that I was wasting all kinds of energy lifting my head all the way out of the water to breathe.
- Third, we learned that I was kicking like a sissy and letting my lower body sink lower than it should.
So...time to focus on my breathing technique and overall form. Here's hoping that next time I can actually make a full lap.