Saturday, July 29, 2006

Swimming Training Update

The improvement on my swimming has been slow but steady, I got a coach to train me once a week and over the last few weeks we have identified what the problems were with my technique. The kicking was lazy but the most critical error was that I overturn my body when I breath, result in breaking up of the kicking rhythm and shorter stretch of my hand after the breathing in the recovery stroke (i.e. I don't stick my hand forward enough). Though the correction is still in progress.
On the positive side, my fitness has improved by a long way. Last Saturday, we went for a boat trip and I swam from boat to shore, it was only a 15 mins journey but I did it entirely on freestyle. I got no idea how far the distance was, the boatman said it was 1km but 15mins of continuous swim in a swimming pool for me will be 600m. Then during the week, I had a breakthough on my speed and did a 49sec lap. It was only a sec down from my previous result but it was still monumental to see the figure "4" on my watch! Not to mention that I achieve this after swimming for 2km in the pool.
This weekend, I am hoping to do a openwater swim of around 2km. But the weather is crap today and hopefully the rain will stop tomorrow.

Here is something to show that swimming can be an adventure, I saw on A1 Channel this week about Mike Horn's adventure in the Amazon, he trekked to the source of the Amazon up on the Andes and followed the entire length of it from there to the Atlantic Ocean. It was a solo journey and for more than 90% of the time, he swam with a Hydrospeed, a body board with the shape of the front of canoe, and propelled by kicking with a pair of fins. That is how he got through some grade 5-6 white water rapids or staying on water for up to ten days.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You better cross that finish line of I will expect a refund from you. Good Luck dude!

Gabs Lau said...

I don't think technorati tag was that useful, I am trying to find something to organse my post into themes, it is not available with bloggers. Mate I am working on my own web template, I will send you the template tonight to see what i have got so far

Gabs Lau said...

alex man, quite positive to finish the 3.8km now, I swam 2km opensea on sunday and found that to be no problem, gonna up my distance to 3km this weekend.

Gabs Lau said...

what domain will you register for martina, her birthday comes first. We 've already registered Freeyasoul.com it will be for the outdoor gear shop.

Gabs Lau said...

How about
Freeyasoul.com would be the portal, under that there will be tags with
Freeyashop - Outdoor Shop
Freeyaself - Blogs
Freeyashots - Trip Gallery & Report