Finally A Week of Winning – Rising From The Bottom Of The Pool

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After two weeks of swimming de-evolution in the pool in Saudi Arabia, I spent many an hour watching YouTube swim videos hoping for divine guidance. Looking, listening, hoping that something would click in my swim impaired brain.

Finding the answer was not as easy as you would expect. YouTube people think, or want, to be the expert. That means they have to denounce what you likely learned from the last video you watched. This adds more confusion to the already frustrating problem you are trying to solve.

Alas, I picked out a few concepts that seemed logical and hauled my depressed self up to the pool starting last Tuesday. The goal was to simply swim 500 yards. It didn’t have to be pretty, it just had to total 500 yards at the end of the session. To my surprise and delight, there was a little bit of swimming that happened! In fact, as the week progressed so did I. I was able to increase my distance from 500 yards to 1,125 yards by the end of the week too. My 500 yard interval times were between 20:21 and 24:49. Nothing to write home about, but I was finally swimming all 500 yards without stopping by the end of the week.

This week I definitely turned the corner. Distance and improvement have been steady. I seem to have found competence with the reach, catch, stroke, and most importantly taking the breath. On the other hand, I have no idea what my legs are doing back there. They kind of have a mind of their own at this point and clearly don’t really care what else the rest of the body is doing.

I also am miraculously even keeping one goggle below the water when I take the breath just like in the YouTube videos. The one goggle below the water is something that the YouTube swimming gurus seem to agree upon.

I started the week on Monday with two 500 yard intervals followed by another 200 yards. Tuesday, confidence was high. Since it almost all came together on Monday, I set out to get in 1,500 yards with three 500 yard intervals. The goal was achieved.

Today, following another morning YouTube video session, another leap forward was achieved. Something about starting the catch, not dropping my elbow, and pointing my fingers down as I continue the stoke clicked with me and the result sent one of my 500-yard times under 17 minutes. This was a 7-minute improvement over just a week earlier! Here is the progression for the past two weeks with each 500 yard interval time.