Today was a fairly short workout in Santa Maria, we did about 2500 yards which is good because that’s probably all my shoulder was going to take anyways. We did a lot of backstroke today which isn’t really my thing, but during the warm up I had an awesome 100 fly by accident. I had no intentions of going fast, but I swam about 1:10 in a drag suit from a push on a 100 fly. Whoops. Not that it was a bad thing, I just didn’t mean to. Too put it in perspective, I was swimming 1:15-1:20 100 frees. I blame the fast fly on the monofinning I’ve been doing. Anyways, here’s the workout:
10 x 100 @ 1:40 choice (I did 8 free, 1 fly, 1 back)
200 back
100 free
150 back
200 free
100 back
300 free
50 back
400 free
2500 yards total
Speaking of ye olde monofin… I took it out again last night and had a ton of fun with it. I did a few slow-ish laps and then went nuts with it. The pool I swim in at Pismo has no gutters so whatever you push out comes right back at you. You wouldn’t believe the waves I had rocking in that little pool last night! There were some teenagers there that were totally confused by what I just did to the pool. Fun :)
I really missed swimming with a monofin… too much fun! I love the feeling of going that fast in the water!
After blowing up my old monofin on Monday I went looking for some help on what style of monofin to replace it with. After consulting with Glenn from GoSwim, the Fortress, and having a conversation with Finis via Twitter the general consensus was I needed the shorter shooter style fin. I ordered it on Tuesday and by Thursday I had my new fin!
The Shooter is a lot shorter than my old trainer style monofin, but it still generates a TON of thrust in the pool. The nice part about the shorter fin (and let’s be real, it’s still pretty big) is that you can kick at a race pace. When you use a bigger fin the kick isn’t the same rhythm/motion as you would use in real life without fins on.
I think I freaked out the other people in the pool tonight with this thing. There were two people walking laps in the good lanes (I got the jacked up lane that’s supposed to be for walking) with shoes and t-shirts on. Once I strapped the monofin on I was tearing up the pool in ways they’ve never seen and were having a hard time comprehending. I swam a few hundred yards with the fin and I mainly did underwater kicking but I did mix in some butterfly which was awesome. We’re talking like 4 strokes/25. I want to play with this thing in a deeper pool to practice my breaching :)
One thing that I need to work on though is getting some kind of foot coverage. That rubber is pretty rough on the tops of my feet. I should have bought some of those little footie things… I guess that’s next on the list of goofy swim stuff I need to go buy :) Anyways… long story short, I have a crush on my new fin and wish I could swim this fast in real life!
Why yes that is me… can you believe I had that much hair?!?
I was planning on not swimming today to rest my shoulder, but I decided to go to the pool anyways… I’m antsy. Anyways my focus was supposed to be kicking and I brought my super huge monofin with me to over compensate for my angry shoulder.
After a short warm up and some more time attempting to learn to snorkel correctly I strapped on my monofin. 3 kicks off the wall my left foot came out of the pocket. I thought it had just slipped. I got it back on and few kicks later both feet had busted through the rubber portion of the foot pockets. You can see the damage below…
boom! goodbye old friend
Admittedly I wasn’t excited about this, but in all reality this thing is like 12 years old and I haven’t gotten it wet in years. I mean it’s so old the blue rubber portion turned green! The upside is I kinda wanted a new one and now I don’t have to feel guilty about buying one :)
So here’s the big question for any of you that are into the whole monofin thing… which one do I get? The big trainer or the shooter? My underwater dolphin kicking is already pretty good but I want it to get even better. Thoughts?
