Monday 18 February 2013

Tenerife #3

In the last 24 hours I have:
* got sunburnt in extremely weird fashion (half of one arm, next to my watch on the other arm, and half of my back) (need to pay better attention to application)
* had a strawberry smoothie
* cringed at myself swimming on film
* had my first openwater swim of 2013

Yesterday afternoon's swim was very hot and sunny, hence the sunburn.  We were in the 50m pool for technical endurance, the focus of which was a mainset of 50m, 10 seconds rest, 100m, 10 seconds rest, 150m, 10 seconds rest and so on up to 400m.  I know I didn't swim as well as I can so felt a bit flat after that.  However, we were in the pool at the same time as Hannah Miley, so that was pretty cool.

Then we went and watched our video footage from the morning.  I cringed more than usual at seeing myself on screen, I'm not really sure why.   Key points for me are that my head is still a bit high (although I'm good at keeping it still), I need to try to keep my fingers apart a bit more, and my right arm still isn't quite close enough to the body.  Still, plenty of time to work on that this week.

Back to the hotel for a quick rest before dinner, lots of food and then the obligatory early night.  Stayed awake until 9:10 pm though!

This morning I was awake at 6am, and up at 6.45 for our first openwater swim of the camp.  Unfortunately it was very windy, so we weren't able to swim across to the little cove where we swam last year, we had to walk there instead :(   It felt cold initially getting in but actually it was really toasty and I didn't get cold at all.  We used to time to practice getting used to swimming in wetsuits again and doing some siting practice.  We finished off this morning's swim with some drills.  Breastroke arms with FC legs; fists for 6 strokes and then normal for 6 strokes, and finally 1 fist for 6 strokes (other hand normal) and swap to the other fist for 6 strokes.  Not done the last one before but that was good.

Came back and had breakfast and tried to have a nap but got woken up by a cleaner.  Hope I can stay awake for the rest of the day!  For the rest of today, it's off to the centre later for a run workshop with Vicky Gill, an elite triathlete who was also world age group duathlon champion the other year.  She is from a running background so an excellent person to learn from.  Then almost immediately we're back in the 25m pool for another 90 minute technical endurance session.  The weather's not so great today and it might rain later, but at least it's warm!

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