1000 (21600)

Stroke Clinic

150 free
5 x 50 breast
3 x 50 (25 back kick / 25 breast)
3 x 50 back
75 dolphin kick
2 x 50 dolphin kick w/snorkel
25 fly
100 free easy

Total: 1000

I'm not sure I've ever mentioned this here, but stroke clinic is mostly about technique for me. This is, essentially, where I learned breaststroke and butterfly. I love the instructor and the people I swim with, and who couldn't use more help with the technical side of swimming?

Chris (the aforementioned instructor) knows that I swim a masters workout in the morning on both stroke clinic days, so she keeps my yards down and focuses on correcting my strokes. Today we focused on breaststroke, and she made an adjustment on my recovery that caused something to finally click. Breaststroke has always been the hardest stroke for me (even more so than butterfly), and it's nice to finally feel like I'm doing it right. She also spent some time on my backstroke, and that's finally starting to look closer to correct as well.

Then she checked my fly, and I'm not sure why, but that stroke always seems to work pretty well for me. I didn't do much of it, but I did a bunch of fly kick with my swimmer's snorkel, which was really good practice. I also did a 50 free with it, and Chris said my stroke looked perfect.

Right before the end, I spent some more time on my flipturns, which are still really rough, but improving ever so slowly. I'm still concentrating really hard on not getting water up my nose, which messes up my breathing a little, but it'll get there eventually.

Lastly, today she had me trying a racing start off the diving board into the well. Um. Let's just say I'm doing it wrong. Both times I managed to connect with the water chest first. Ow. We're still working on it, and I've only done it four times total now, so I don't feel like too much of an idiot. Yet. Heh.