OMG - Swim the swim and swim

Today I was in the gym again swimming.

I finally found my stride.  After some warm up followed lengths working on my technique a little, and a few trying to get front crawl going, I just started swimming.  People were mulling around a little, and I didn't really want to stop, so I didn't.  Then I continued not to, and just kept going, and going, and going.

I don't know how many laps I ended up swimming, but at one point I attempted to recount them in my head and counted at least 10, so I'm guessing somewhere between 10 and 15, but it could have been more.

I have swum 10 continuous laps before (500 yards), but this time was different.  I swam the entire set breast stroke, and at the end, I stopped only because my foot was starting to feel a bit off, not because I was gasping for breath.  If not for my foot, I think I could have continued on for some time.  They weren't small slow kind of lengths either, they were good solid strong lengths.  Not race-horse speed or anything, but not a snails pace either.  I only wish I'd had a lap counter to tell me how many and at what pace.

The realization yesterday or maybe before, I forget, that when I was pulling up, I was doing so poorly, seemed to relieve me of a great deal of tension in my stroke, and now I'm pulling up more effectively, I'm dropping down more effectively, so the whole stroke feels more relaxed and even.  My leg motion is still all over the place, but, I'm improving it slowly.

with 2012 on the doorstep, I'm hoping that I can keep it up in the coming months.  At least it has the advantage that it's indoors and very low hassle.  I keep my bag in the car mostly, lay my towel out on in the back to dry, which as long as it's above about 40, it does, so mostly all I have to do is stand up, open the front door and drive to the Y.

I really need to get back into yoga class though.  Yoga improves both my core strength and perhaps more importantly my posture.  Too many years tense and hunched over a keyboard has left me rather round-shouldered.  My grandmother warned me of such, but of course, I was young and did not listen.