I had a couple of small breakthroughs in my swimming this week. Breakthrough #1 I finally figured out how to breathe out with my face in the water. That might have been last week, I can't remember. Suddenly I could swim 25 yards in something resembling a crawl! But I was too wild, and I couldn't concentrate on my stroke. It took me around 30 strokes to cross the pool. Breakthrough #2 I figured out how to start to pace myself. I wasn't good at it, but my distance doubled to 50 yards! I still couldn't concentrate on my stroke, but adding a little glide gave me some rest and got me across the pool in 18 strokes pretty consistently. My breathing improved quite a bit. Breakthrough #3 From a youtube video I got the idea to hold my breath and then exhale all at once as I start to turn to inhale. Wow - suddenly I was getting rid of the CO2 and my head was clear and I felt good in the water. I still couldn't balance well enough to do any fingertip or thumb drills. Breakthrough #4 I wasn't going to work on bilateral breathing until I smoothed out the recovery part of my stroke, but I tried it anyway. This was a big one - suddenly my balance fell into place and I could swim smooth enough to observe and control my recovery (pulling the arm out of the water & forward). I can now breath out either continuously or all at once and it doesn't matter too much. I can push some air out through my nose before blowing most of it out my mouth and it keeps my nose fairly clear. I swam 1,000 yards over 45 minutes in 25, 50, and 100-yard lengths. My kick is minimal, drifting between 2-beat and 6-beat. That's fine for me since I'm tri swimming. I'd prefer not to kick any more than necessary to save my legs. But I throw in a frog kick now and then. Hopefully I can break that habit before the race. At this point I need to work on 1. Power phase of the stroke - keeping my elbow high, keeping each hand on its respective side of the body, and letting my hand relax & my fingers come apart after entry. 2. Balanced timing between left and right strokes 3. Recovery - keeping my fingertips at water level, keeping my hand within a thumb of my body, and maybe a shark fin pause before my hand goes into the water. 4. Increased distance - I need to push my non-stop swimming to 200 yards by the end of the week, and probably increase the total distance per workout to 1300 yards. 5. Stabilized stroke-count & pace - with a long glide I cross the pool in 14 strokes. Adding the bilateral breathing felt great but it made my normal stroke count get a little wild - 17 to 24. So as I work on getting all the parts of the stroke smooth I think this will mellow out and hopefully end up around 16. 6. Relax - my goggles leak if I scrunch my face, so I'm trying to zen my way through this. I close my eyes a lot, too, a pre-goggle habit held over. I picked up a mantra from a tri forum and shortened it to "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" or "slow is fast". I think about this to calm down and relax and it seems to work.