Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Swim workout with Hannover 96 Tri Club

I figured that I should really do something because 1, I spend all my free time alone and 2, my training has been more pathetic than ever. So combine the two!

I have mentioned that I have contacted a swim coach for Hannover Triathlon team and he invited me to come to his swim workout today.

You see. I once went to masters swim when I was in LA and I did not like it very much. Probably because back then I had no idea what I was doing. For example the coach said do “two seventy five”, which I interpreted in my little brain as 2x75, which in fact it was 275. Some of it was “don’t understand this swimmers’ slang” related, some was “poor English understanding” related. But then I went to CH’s swim practices and at first I had to ask him half the time what I was supposed to do because I had no idea what he was talking about. That one completely “poor Slovak understanding” related because by then I pretty much understand very well what I am supposed to do it the pool:)

But you can just imagine what I was doing in that pool today:)

Ok, It was not that bad. One girl explained how it works to me. The coach assigned me to a lane (solely on my appearance because there was no other matrix to do it:)) and off we went.
It was 50m pool and we were 6 or 7 in my lane, not sure.
It was not as bad as I expected it to be, I mean langugae-wise. Sure sometimes I had no idea what I was supposed to do. At the beginning the coach said that kick with one leg. What, kick with one leg? Never heard of that. That must be my "poor German understanding" related and she probably said kick with both legs. So I did my regular kicking. Turns out that we were indeed supposed to kick with one leg.
Then I was ok for the main set but I got lost again when people were doing something with fins. We were doing 200s but I did not understand how many of them. But I did not care and thus did not ask because I did not have fins anyway so I just did as many as I could before the others stopped.
I did 100w/up, 2x200 kick, 8x150 with buoy (4 w/ paddle, 4 w/out) descent 1-3, then around 500 doing whatever (that's when the other were using fins), 100 c/d.

It was a pretty good workout although I was little all over the place, but it was very similar to that masters' swim I had gone to. Just swimming with no real coaching/technique corrections. whereas CH yelled at each and everyone of us to tell us what we do wrong and he corrects our technique.
But I guess one cannon really do something like that when you have 30+ people in a pool like we had today.

The coach told me that since it is only for 2 months that I can just come without paying any membership fees or anything. 3 swims/week for free? SURE. The best deal ever! And hopefully in few sessions I will understand everything they want from me:)
I will work on my technique on my own in one of those crowded bathing pools.

They also have bike rides over weekends (they also do them on weekdays but I cannot do those) so I will probably join them on Saturday morning. At least I will explore the bike routes little bit more.

On Saturday I am also going to the 20th anniversary party of a local bike shop. I have found about it online and I am not sure what I will do there but a guy from some kind of sport performance diagnostic centre in Hannover is going to give a speech about power-based training. That should be interesting. Well, unless I do not understand half the things he will say, which honestly might be a case. But maybe I will learn new vocabulary (for example I have learn today how you say fins, but I have already forgotten. Starts with "s" though").

And if nothing else, I hope I get to test ride this baby.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, I don't know if you read Lauren Fleshman's blog..she has a stubborn ITB, see link below, and I thought you might get some info from her as to what she has tried so far, etc.

    http://asklaurenfleshman.com/journal/2012/03/13/it-band-hits-rock-bottom-if-only-this-was-about-a-rock-group/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AskLaurenFleshman+%28Ask+Lauren+Fleshman%29

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