My workout for today was a swim.  Among all of the challenges of the past year, the one that has frustrated me the most, is the relative lack of opportunity to work on improving my swim.

With local pools finally back open, and the fact that my own preferred pool is under utilized right now, I am really keen to get into the water and work hard.  I strongly believe that to become a better swimmer, I need to swim more … a lot more.

So when I realized that my swim this evening was only 1,600 yards long, and that I would only be in the pool for about thirty minutes, I started to get frustrated.  I wanted to swim more. I wanted to work harder. 

This can be a very typical reaction among triathletes, but then I took a deep breath and remembered…. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are triathletes.

I am not going to be a significantly better swimmer, by swimming harder and longer for a few weeks.  I am much more likely to become a better swimmer, by doing several relatively short swims, week after week after week after week. 

Being consistent is important, but there is another significant benefit of not overdoing the length of swim sessions.  If your sessions get long, then it is very likely that your swim form will degrade towards the end of the session, as you get tired.  With swimming being such a technique driven sport, swimming with poor form due to fatigue, is more of a bad thing than a good thing.  If you swim with poor form, you are just reinforcing bad habits.

When I finished my swim this evening, I realized that I was still feeling quite fresh and that my form had remained good throughout the session.  I ended up happy, knowing I had taken another small step towards becoming a better swimmer.