Meeting a legend

Today I met a legend.
Today I give you a photo of me looking like a maniac in my swimming cap with a legend:

This is Mr Terry Laughlin. The founder of the swimming tecnique Total Immersion. 

I came in contact with Total Immersion almost a year ago when I met my Anna-Karin Lundin, aka Simcoachen. I had for some months tried to learn how to swim "regular" freestyle by myself for a swimrun competition that I was going to participate in. But my tecnique was so bad I could hardly swim 25 meters without having the sensation that I was gonna drown. 

For the whole of this year I have put as much effort as I can into trying to learn how to swim freestyle through Total Immersion (TI) and to be honest I have many times felt that I either have a coordination problem or that I will not be able to learn this as I have passed the age of 40. However, I have never been a quitter and therefore I still try and try. And although my tecnique is not so good I managed, together with one of my best friends Maria, to win the biggest swimrun contest here on the Westcoast of Sweden. 32k running on rocks in the archipelago and 5k OW swimming with high waves, currents and A LOT of jellyfish that burn you. A year ago this would not have been possible and I would have laughed at people insinuating that I would win. But we did. For 2014 our goal is to get a spot in the 2014 edition of the biggest swimrun here in Sweden, ÖtillÖ. Classified by CNN as one of the most challenging one day multisport competitions in the world, 65k running and 10k swimming. I sincerely believe that TI will help me subcome this big challenge! 

But let´s get back to today. It was a bit overwhelming for many of the participants to meet Terry, including myself. He started to talk about what we were gonna do and describing the finesse with the tempotrainer. With the tempotrainer under your swimcap you can get a feeling for rhythm and pace. The tempo trainer beeps on intervals that you set. For example if you put it on 1.30, it beeps every 1.30 seconds and that is the tempo for your strokes, i.e. everytime the tempo trainer beeps you put your hand in the water and start a stroke. Our mission today was to count our strokes and then change the pace on the tempo trainer and see what happened with the stroke count. Another goal was to try and control the exact amount of strokes we did on each lap. Not the easiest thing! We also did several series with different focuses using the tempo trainer, for example one lap the focus was to focus on the hip rhythm via the tempo trainer. Another lap to fokus on what was going on with your legs/feet on the beep. 

Terry talked about getting the feel for a certain pace in the body and for that the tempo trainer is a very good help/guidance. I can compare that to running; you can use your GPS for getting feedback on your pace but it should never be controling you, you must get a feeling in your body for a certain pace. Also a treadmill will help you with getting the feel for a certain pace. Two years ago I ran a lot without my GPS watch to learn to listen to my body and get a feel for certain paces. Every race I did that year I could almost predict my finishing time on the minute. I will certainly use the tempo trainer in my swimming from now on to try and get a feel for certain paces and how to adjust the body either to lower pace or higher. 

Together with Terry was also TI-coach Tracey Maison Bauman from UK and of course Anna-Karin Lundin. 

It was a very good clinic/workshop and for me a nice distraction from the focus I have now with me running the ING NYC Marathon on Sunday. I know what my weaknesses are and what I have to work on with my swimming. Me trying to not to breathe in order to keep a good tecnique was immediately detected, hahaha. "The head is safe in the water, it´s like having the head on a pillow", hmmm, I´m not sure but maybe next time I´ll bring a real pillow and I will finally get a breakthrough with my breathing?