Splash Splash

The night? Wednesday 

The place? LMU swimming pool 

The mission? Complete our last team swim practice.

Getting ready to dive in

Yesterday, as usual, we ran through the Wednesday motions. I make my way over to pick the sisiter at work at 6pm and we face the feat of getting through LA traffic to make it to practice by 7pm. We usually get there right on time but the last two weeks we've made it with 15 minutes to spare. We got to practice and our coaches talked through a few logistics for the weekend and afterward we got in and ready for business. We did a warm up and sprint work. We were teaching our bodies to swim through an elevated heart rate. It was good! I felt good! However, last night (& this morning) I'm feeling it.

After about 200m, I'm all warmed up (pre-shoulder pain)

The Problem: My left shoulder feels a bit strained so I'm trying to take it easy. I googled what could the cause of the pain could be. I believe I've found...

The Answer: I normally breathe on my right side. As I bring my left arm to enter the water, instead of having my hand come forward as it's entering the water (fingers pointed at an angle), my thumb will enter first, putting pressure on my shoulder. Definitely got to work on the mechanics of my stroke a little bit. 

Before the shoulder pain, we were instructed to get out of the pool and we knew what was coming. Last week we went through a drill where we, little by little, jumped in the pool and made our way through the lanes, like snake. 

Last drill - we snake through the lanes, from one end to the other

I usually stay behind because I don't want to be in the front with the faster swimmers or those who are secretly competing against other teammates, but last night, I thought, "Why not?" So I made my way to the edge of the pool, jumped in, and swam! It was kind of competitive. There was a point when I tried to pass two teammates and one of them slightly knocked my googles and they almost came off. I recovered, though. Once we were done, we made our way into one swim lane. Coach Paul quickly explained that we were about to complete a "rite of passage." We were all given paddle boards and were instructed to make the swim down the lane impossible, or as near to. Check out the video of me and a teammate making it down the lane. It wasn't too bad, if I do say so myself! 

After practice, we went to Tower Pizza for our last meal. We ate, we were merry, we're ready for Sunday!