I've been a little lazy on the blogging, but I've still been training steadily.

On Saturday, I attended a swim clinic at the YMCA. Which was, I'm sad to report, kind of a disappointment.

I was really hoping to get some feedback on my stroke and some suggestions on how to improve my swim.

I didn't really get that.

First off, almost every single piece of advice the guy running the clinic gave was exactly opposite everything I've learned from Total Immersion and the research I've done.

For example, TI says that balance is the key to not sinking in the water. The guy who ran the swim clinic said that kicking was the number one thing.

TI says that, if you want to swim faster, the answer is NOT to kick faster and move your arms faster. This guys stressed that you need to be able to kick real fast if you want to be a strong swimmer.

Finally, everything I've read suggests that you should maximize your time in the gliding position, with one hand extended and streamlined. This guy said that you should never, ever use the gliding position because that is just a time-costing rest that you shouldn't need.

But that isn't even the issue I had with the whole thing. Different schools of thought have different approaches to technique and I don't know enough to say which is the right one.

The clinic consisted of us sitting in the bleachers while he gave a little mini-lecture about consistency and power and then we hopped in the water.

Where he proceeded to give us a bunch of drills to practice. So he'd say, "Okay, the next drill is where you swim with your fists" and would talk a little bit about why you do that. And then he'd make us swim 50 with our fists.

But then, instead of giving people feedback on the way they performed the drill, he just moved on to the next one.

Which wasn't anything I couldn't have gotten from a book or the research I've been doing.

So now I'm thinking more seriously about sucking it up and paying for individual lessons. There's no replacing the chance to really have someone focus on my specific issues and give me undivided attention. And who doesn't love undivided attention?

The good news from the weekend is that I went out on my new bike for the first time and it is super duper amazing! Love it! I was only planning on going out for an easy 30-minute ride, but somehow we ended up doing 16 miles. And I loved it!

Today, though, I missed my first workout since I started training. ): I was supposed to have a 45-minute ride this afternoon and I wasn't prepared for the rain. Randy is going to get a hold of a trainer for me, but he hasn't yet. So I just didn't ride. But I figured that I did above and beyond yesterday, so I don't feel too badly.

The swim this morning was just okay. I was feeling really discombobulated from the swim clinic on Saturday and trying to take the good things I learned there and meld it with the things I've learned in the last couple of months.

During tomorrow's swim, I think I'm just going to back out and focus on swimming intuitively and swimming to figure out what works best for me in the water, instead of trying to swim according to someone else's rules. We'll see how that goes.