Dancing Habits Bite Me in the Ankle...?

I haven't been swimming much. Whoops. For two reasons:
(1) Focused on half marathon
(2) I hate swimming, well I'm bad at it
But, I got in the pool today and did our 3000 yard workout. It took me an obscenely long amount of time because, well, did I mention I'm awful at swimming? But, no matter how much I protest, I can't just stop swimming. It is a part of this sport and I have this weird opinion that duathlons are just cop-outs for triathletes like me who hate swimming.

Towards the end of the workout, as is to be expected (at least for me) I attempted to push off the wall with some serious force and ended up cramping up a little in my left leg. It went away fast and I've experience far worse. Then my right started. AWESOME, calves, thanks. Then I came home and my ankle hurt, so I iced it and now I'm sleeping with my old friend ankle brace.

While lamenting to my triathlete boyfriend (who also hates swimming), we both couldn't remember enough about swimming form to remember if you are supposed to keep your feet pointed or not. So I asked my teammate and impressively good swimmer-friend, Kendyl, who said "NO NO NO, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO KEEP YOUR FEET NEUTRAL."
Whoops. Little me, who is used to dancing and this pointed toe nonsense has been pointing her toe the whole time. It will be interesting what happens next time I get in the pool.

Thus, my serious lack of knowledge about swimming form has spurred on this post. Foremost, to keep me from doing stupid stuff like this again, but also... because maybe it will give me some incentive to get into the pool next time I don't want to (which is every time).

One of the first things that I was told when I started swimming this year was to relax my neck and drop my head. Basically, if you drop your head (don't look forward, look down) this will bring your hips and legs up and decrease your drag, which will allow you to go faster.

Something I'm working on right now is (core) body rotation. I tend to rotate my hips, but struggle with getting my whole body to rotate along with me. When you swim on only your stomach, you have a larger surface on the water = more drag = slow.

Another thing our coach talking about all the time is thinking about distance per stroke. For this, you want to think about being tall and focus on the longest you can be during a stroke. To help this, it is important to have one arm in front of you at all times and delaying the start of pulling said arm until your recovery arm has hit the water. This one is kind of new for me, or at least thinking of it this way is.

SO now you (or maybe just me) have some new bits of information to jump in the pool with. Go forth. Prosper.