another big week in the pool, more progress

Well last week was a big step forward, and I need to take many big steps forward,

I had two really hard swims, Tuesday and Thursday, my real focus is on bringing intensity to my swim and lifting the pace.

For my time trial on Thursday I swam a 32 min 1km which was 4 Min's faster than the last one the previous month. I wasn't very happy with it at the time, but now I can see that it was a good result.

I think I get so caught up in wanting to have the result now, to have my swim down to a 1:30 that I forget that it is a process and I get annoyed when I see small gains as I want to see massive gains. When in reality four minites is a massive gain.

I'm meeting with my main partner Access Healthcare this Friday to discuss how we can work together how I can speak to their staff and inspire them to do better and be better. This weeks meeting is a really technical meeting about all the nuts and bolts of the relationship. I'm really enjoying the relationship so far it fees very natural and unforced.

I go up to Taupo with Lynley and the IM crew from the 13-15th August, so that is where my whole programme will kick off for real with a big weekend of intense training and bonding as a group and then hit the ground runing

Moving onwards...

Just spent the weekend away with my swim coach from campaign 09, we still have a really good relationship even though I have moved on to a new coach,

It was really good to get away from the full on nature of town. This week has been especially crazy, I met an especially great team at Access health care.
We share a similar view on patient focus and my lived experience as a disabled person in New Zealand will be great for promoting their wonderful brand and the great work their staff do around New Zealand on a day by day basis.

I'm really looking forward to working with Access on a longer term basis on a wide range of issues.

This week I have two tough sets in the pool for squad, so here we go...

Small changes make for large improvments

I was at squad this morning, I have been away for a well earned break before term starts, so I was expecting a bad swim anyway. My last two weeks in the pool have been ordinary to say the least, Ali's been away and I've missed his closeness to correct my stroke. He gave me a simple direction today, to bring my left arm out of the water and breath every stroke.

Initially it didn't work, the key was, and this is the magic part, that I needed to rotate my shoulders just a little to allow for my left arm to come out of the water, before with no rotation there was no pull in my stroke, with the rotation I can get the full pull from my left arm.

It is magic how just a little shift, of inches can make all the difference to what I'm doing in the water.