Swimming: I do not love it

I need to improve a lot on my swim. Since Kona I have been steadily increasing my weekly yardage. This week I did 32,000 yards. I peaked out on Friday with a 10,000 yard day. For good swimmers that really isn’t that much but for me 10,000 is the farthest I have ever swam at one time. I started by doing 4,000 steady in 1:07:45, I was pretty slow for the first 1,000 but then I stayed just under 1:40 per hundred for the rest. I then did the main part of my workout, a 4,000 yard time trial as fast as I could go. I did it in 1:02:50. I ended up averaging about a 1:34 per hundred for the whole time. I was pretty tired at this point. I then did 5 200’s on a 4 minute send off. I averaged 3:00 per 200. Then I did an easy 1,000 to finish it off. I hope that doing a lot of yardage at a fast pace (fast pace relative to my ability) will help me find that elusive “feel” for the water. I’m also trying a psychological trick. I have never really loved swimming. For a long time I felt that I needed to develop a love or a passion for swimming in order to get better, so I have tried to mentally force myself to fall in love with swimming but it just is not going to happen. I don’t love to swim but I think I have figured out a way to capture the next best thing to loving swimming. I do love to go down to my corner room of my basement and get on my bike. I love the feeling of pushing the limits of what I can do and I love to see the quantification of my improvement. When I think of doing a really challenging bike workout I can get that feeling like I will bash my head into a brick wall trying to break through. So before key swim workouts I imagine getting on my bike and I focus on that feeling and I try to apply that feeling to my swim workout. I hope that this will help me to have a swim breakthrough this winter. I am sick and tired of being so far behind after the swim. I am doing IronMan St George again in 2012 and if I don’t come out of the water before 59:59 I will be disappointed.