South Head Swim

Yesterday I competed in the South Head Rough Water Swim, a 10km black water swim. Although the seas were calm the strong head current made the swim over an hour longer than what that distance should actually take. The swim itself is nothing but spectacular, with giant cliffs plunging into deep black water off Sydney's coastline.
The best part of the day was undoubtably swimming through the Heads. Very few people actually get to have this honour and today Duncan and I did it!
Yet again we had a great support team with Matt driving his boat, Mick and Christian support paddling and Narelle looking after food and drinks.

Long Swim

Second long swim back after Rottnest and it seemed easier than usual and I think I know why.

For the last 4 weeks I have been working hard with Andrew and Suzy on improving my stroke to improve efficiency and relieve some right shoulder tension. With an increasing training load coming up for the Gibraltar Swim starting in October now is the time to do this much needed technique work.

So it's been a few weeks of changing the angle of my right hand entry and eliminating my trademark right arm stretch before starting my catch. It was a weird feeling to start with but as the weeks rolled on the feeling became one of 'just been' normal.

All the training has been short sharp sessions designed at getting the feel before getting tired. There was strictly no long sets or no speed work until I could instantly feel if I reverted back to that 'old stroke'.

So today was the first long session where a 10km swim was planned. I decided to break the swim into 6 x 1km and then a 4km swim once I started to get tired. I decided it was about completing the swim and forgetting the times. Lucky, as my watch was showing some terrible splits. But I walked away from the set feeling full of energy and best of all no shoulder joint pain.

So it's onto the 10km Roughwater swim in Sydney next weekend to give my new stroke another good work out before going back to the pool for the winter.