Swimming mania

You may recall that I found a place to swim back in June. I started out with a few tenuous laps, worked up to slightly longer stretches in the water, then had the good fortune to swim with Jeremy, who knows what he’s doing and loves the water more than anyone I’ve ever met.
To my utter embarrassment, he watched me carefully and gently corrected my stroke. I owe him a debt of gratitude. Although at the time I wanted to sink to the bottom of the pool and hide, I did listen to what he explained and after breaking some of my bad habits, I swim heaps better.
My arms describe a sinuous path through the water. My shoulder extends and my hand enters the water far ahead of my head, then pulls back though the water nearly skimming my body, brushes past my hip, and breaks the surface elbow first. My kick is a slow hip driven 1-2 beat opposing my arms. It’s nearly as easy as walking.
The coaching session with Jeremy was about six weeks ago. I bought a monthly pool pass shortly after that and now get in the water every morning or pay the consequence of being antsy all day. I swim for 45 minutes or so then come home and bore Tod by talking about swimming while we have lunch together. Tod doesn’t swim.
But my sister swims, as it turns out. So we compare our lap times and laugh about how slow we are. I do 50 meters (two lengths of my 25m pool) in a mere 58 seconds–about the same speed as competitive 80 year olds. Next time Jenn & I are in the water together, we’re going to race. She’ll win; she swims 50m in 54 seconds.
Today I increased my distance per stroke, taking it down to 16 strokes across 25 meters. Usually I do 18 strokes per length, so shaving off two is a big change. I don’t know if it made me any faster, but it felt good. I’m not consistent, though. I need more strokes as I tire. I definitely must work on my stamina.
I’m by no means a good swimmer, but I’m learning and improving every time I get into the water. And that’s all that matters. That and beating Jenn when we race.