Saturday, September 27, 2008

Swimming Straight

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My swimming has really improved this year, although you might not be able to tell from my race splits. I've been getting lessons from Lincoln Djang, and every session with him has been great. I'm constantly amazed that each time we meet he can quickly spot some way to improve my stroke, and then has a drill that allows me to correct the flaw and at the same time get a kinesthetic feel for the correction so I can work on it.

But even though my pool times have dropped dramatically, I've had mixed results in the open water. Apparently I don't swim very straight, I curve pretty dramatically to the right, and if I don't sight every 5 strokes I'll quickly be way off course. I can't quite figure out why this happens, but this photo from a recent race may be a clue ...