Resistance Drills, and LSD in Ghost Town anyone?

Today was another challenge, when Eric taught us to swim with added resistance. Ready for it?

Swim with one arm at the back. Right arm pull out, left arm pull back. 

With pedals, I could feel the left arm weakened in every single pulls. My breathing went haywire, and I was breathless in every laps. Eric mentioned that the feeling of weak left arm was because I did not push all the way to the break of water, which is true as with left arm pulls, I have to breathe on my weak left side, and whenever that happens, I started sinking and to compensate, I did not finish the push to make a quicker turnaround.

I suck in coordination, and that is a fact. It took me months to learn how to weave a ketupat.

Shortly after, we learned to minimise our kicks to conserve energy. Kicks, to me, are relatively neutral and having been running for a while now, I cannot give prior instructions to not to kick. They will kick naturally. As kicks uses more energy to do (distance from the heart), it should be just enough to propel the momentum to move forward, as the propulsion in the swim should some from powerful pushes from both arms.

So, while swimming, all I could hear in my head was, 'pap, pap, pap, pap'... and see Eric's arms mimicking the kicks just before each pushes. What it was, the motion asks for are (1) water entry/glide, (2) kicks, and (3) pull and powerful push out. It should happen concurrently as the other hand enters the water and repeats itself.

I had those images, and the sound of Eric's 'pap, pap, pap, pap', but in reality, it was hard. Finally, when we had to do 500m swim (paddles off), it was somewhere after the first 200m that I felt the drift, but lost it again in the final 100m as I just wanted it to finish. Tough, lah jugak... 

But I think it was a good drill. I did feel I glide better, and use less energy. It was not as labourous, looking at the pace that we did, so it all boils down to practice.

Enough about swimming - the weekend is here! There is an LSD calling tonight in Putrajaya, doing a 25-30k distance from 9 p.m. which I will try my best to join. Not sure yet as my brother-in-law is having my car for the day, but probably I'll join slightly later. After what happened in PICC last weekend, I wouldn't to do it alone :)

And we are blitzing NB15k on Sunday? I'll do a short version, as Iris looks forward for her swim class at 9 a.m. Happy Weekend, Happy Nasi Lemak!