The New Road

SU-27 style

Last week I did a mile workout in my local outdoor pool and there was an instructor there giving someone else a lesson. When we were both finished I went by and asked her if she had any time available for lessons and then we talked about what I was working on. Her one small remark was that I should do lots of abs work because she was going to have me work on arching my back in the stroke during the lesson. I haven't had the lesson yet, but I have been working on a few things.

The first thing was getting my hand positions aligned better. That took me from around 35 minutes to around 32. Today I started from there and added keeping my feet straight out for the first dozen laps. Then adding in moving the quads and calfs as a unit for the second dozen. Then finally arching my back more to complete it for the third set. My time came in at 30:50 which is well and away a record for me.

I call the completed stroke style with the straight feet, quads aligned with calfs and arched back my SU-27 style because it reminds me of the S curve in the side profile of the Russian Flanker fighter. Yeah, I know it's geeky, but it gives me something to model in my mind as I'm swimming.

This thing looks a lot funnier in pictures than it does in this schematic. It's really ugly with this kind of mound of a cockpit and a whole heap of engines underneath. But it flies like a cut cat and that's what counts.

Putting it all together it's certainly a lot faster than what I had been doing. I can really feel the difference in the power coming from behind. It's like I'm surfing along on a wave as opposed to clawing my way through the waiter dragging my rear end behind. I can't wait to try it out for a complete set tomorrow. Perhaps I can break the 30 minute flat mark.