Swimming Progress – Time to Get Outdoors

For the last three months I have been swimming a lot more than I ever have in my life this far. I swam once a week till I was about 12 years old, and only intermittently from then onwards – like twice a year when on holiday or at the beach.

I could still swim, quite well I thought, but it turns out, I had an awful lot to relearn. But after 3 months of gradual training my stroke and fitness have improved vastly and I feel a lot more fluid in the water. I have been swimming around 3 to 5 times a week, gradually building from 30 – 45 minute sessions to 1hr – 2hr sessions.

There’s a handy gadget at at pool called a swimtag which records your stroke and lengths. My stats so far:

Total Swims: 45

Total Distance: 82km

Average Distance: 1819m

Average Swim Duration: 47m

This helps a lot, as it means you can just focus on your swimming rather than trying to remember the amount of lengths you have swam. It is also possible to produce graphs showing your progess, which is encouraging as it shows I am steadily improving.

But, training thus far has all been in the pool, so indoors. It needs to be more specific now, I need to spend the next three months doing a considerable amount of swimming outdoors. This will allow my body to get used to swimming in a wetsuit in cold water.