I was swimming tonight (only 1500 yards, because I got there late) and thinking about this article I read in the New York Times that talks about the importance of breathing and rhythm in swimming.

It actually took me a long time before I could swim freestyle for any length of time for basically that reason — although the fact that I was kicking as hard as possible didn’t help. Now I can swim for an hour and a half (maybe longer, I haven’t tried), but the first 250ish yards of freestyle are almost always the hardest. It can take a couple laps to get into the rhythm; I have to concentrate on breathing out when my head is under water and tell myself I can switch to breast stroke soon. But by about 275, it feels totally natural. Not sure if that’s weird or not. Anybody else have this problem?