One aspect of the duel is the "fish against anchor" duel. Alain always gets a huge head start on the bike thanks to my less than modest swimming skills. But I am determined to minimize the loss and to reduce the deficit. What was close to 7 minutes (ouch!) shouldon an olympic distance in 2010 without a wetsuit hopefully become more like 5-7 minutes on the Ironman next year. Yeah right. But all hope is not lost, because now I can visualize how real swimming heros swim, thanks to a link from my coach Alan.
Virtual swim shows the techniques of world class swimmers. The first three on the page are what I learned are called "front quadrant" swimmers, i.e. they always have one arm in front of them and almost swim catch up. This is supposed to work well when you are super fast because it makes for a "long vessle." They also manage to keep their elbows super high and "grab" a lot of water with the forearm. Flexible shoulders anybody? The third one is Grant Hackett, who held the 1500m world record for about 10 years, even through the period when every record was smashed because of the high tech swimsuits. All of them have pretty strong kicks though.
The one that looks a bit different is the last one - the 800m female champion, who swims with very straight arms and rotates very little from the hips. Apparently that is supposed to work well in open water and for triathletes who swim slower than "real" swimmers and who don't have the strong kick and glide for front quadrant swimming.
Hm, now I know a lot more swimming styles but still suck at it. Recognition is the first step to improvement? I hope!
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