Slow but steady progress

Since I last posted, I have continued to try to build up my swimming.  My first full week of swimming after the accident (my swimming weeks seem to begin on a Monday) saw me cover 21k, in 7 swims (over 6 days), and also do my first run since the accident (slow shuffle, but not quite sure how slow as the GPS stopped recording after 2k...).  My times continued to frustrate me.  I saw my osteopath who managed to give me a bit more mobility in my forearm, but pointed out how wasted it still was.

Last week however saw some real gains made.  I managed to cover 27k in 11 swims (more on this rather large number later), which I think is good going for less than 3 weeks out of plaster.  On Maundy Thursday I swam 4k straight in the pool, and it took me about 1h13, and I was at the 3.8k mark at about 1h9.  On Good Friday, I repeated the exercise and it took about 1h12, so I was still at 18 minutes for a kilometre.  On Easter Sunday, I swam 2 x 1k (with 200m of kicking in between).  The first one took me a while to warm up and came in at around 18 minutes 10 seconds.  The second one took me around 17 minutes 30 seconds...and I was in a 50m pool.  Gains slowly going in the right direction due to Dan from Swim for Tri.

This was because I decided to spend the weekend in Cardiff where Dan was holding a swim technique workshop.  One of the guys on the course asked me why I was attending since, even just out of plaster, by triathlon standards, my swimming is ok.  As Dan explained, 5 weeks in plaster was 5 weeks of unlearning, and video analysis showed that there was a lot to improve on my stroke.  We also identified during some of the drills that not only is my left forearm wasted, but that the lats on my left side are not as strong as they were.  So practising drills, continuing to work on old problems, and seeing myself on camera was really helpful, and I'm sure helped me with that improved time for a k.  I came away with a good idea of things to work on (and started practising those this morning in the pool) and starting to feel stronger in the water again.  A weekend well spent!  I made some notes of the drills that I need to practice and will get a DVD of my video analysis in due course so I hope that I am well set up to make my come back. 

All of this swimming hasn't been too bad on the wrist, which is good.  Thursday and Friday were a bit uncomfortable, but Sunday wasn't until I made the mistake of using paddles!  I tried cycling today and although I managed to get to work, the angle that my arm needs to be to hold the handlebars and the potholes made it just too uncomfortable at the moment.