On February 20th, I swam 1700 yards.  I was supposed to swim 1800, or a mile the next week.  But I injured my neck doing tae bo and the 200 sit-up challenge.  I dropped way down to 350 yards in March.  I’ve slowly built my yardage back up, recuperating in the hot tub at the same time.

Today, I finally reached that mile(stone).  I took my daughter with me, and I’m glad I did.  Because even though it was the day after Memorial Day (and all that holiday eating), I managed to make my all-time best time on my IM:  2:35.99.  I totally credit my daughter; just having her in a single lane with me made me want to swim my best.  She told me she thought I was going fast and that I did a good job.  She’s been trained right!

Anyway, true to my form, I wanted to savor that time and refused to time my second IM.  I was so wiped out after that good time that it took a while to recover.  My daughter later reminded me that you’re always tired when you’re swimming.  She’s a gem, I tell you!

I was half-way done when I’d finished my second IM.  Now it was time to swim free and back and breast sets without any recovery laps.  It was a challenge, and I didn’t do many flip turns because I was so tired, but I limped on through.

I plan on staying at the mile mark until it’s a little less challenging and time consuming.  I look forward to taking it on solo in two days.  (My daughter got her hair done today; no chance of getting her back in the pool anytime soon).

My schedule was thrown off this week because of Girls on the Run. The big run was the day I would have gone swimming, and I took the next day off to recuperate.  Even so, today was tiring.

My suit is also tired. About two months ago, I bought a new swim suit.  It was a Speedo, so I was excited to have a serious suit.  There was an immediate problem:  it has a plunging neckline, not really great for working out.  It looked good on me though, so I used it.  Now it has a different problem:  it’s breaking down, becoming threadbare in areas.  This happens to all swim suits, the more you use them.  But there’s one suit I bought 4 years ago that’s still holding together just fine.  So I retired the newer suit and brought out the old one.  Go figure!

The “I’m swimming!” glow was still on when I swam the first 300.  Then it was time for my first IM.  It came in at 2:47.02, which by itself is pretty decent, but it’s 3 seconds slower than my slowest time on Tuesday.  I did some more laps, too tired to really work on flip turns and did my second IM in the 800-900 yard set.  This was even slower:  2:50.76, even though I felt like I was flying.

In my 1200th set, I tried to swim 100 free without stopping.  I was panting and disappointed with myself after the first 50.  I went ahead and finished that set, followed by 100 back.  I did flip turns when I could manage.  I banged my heel on the edge of the pool doing a flip turn. It stung, but I kept going.

My total yardage was 1700, which is just 100 shy of a mile.  I intend to stay there a while once I achieve it.

I was looking forward to today for two weeks.  Today was the pool party for Girls on the Run.  I had envisioned a family love fest in the pool.

Not 5,000 balls flying through the air, landing dangerously close to the baby.  Rather, hitting her in the face.

I had forgotten the joys of a kids’ pool party.  The only thing missing was a proliferation of water guns.  phew!

And while the other Mommies sat watching from afar, I was in the pool, clutching the baby, who loves water.  She didn’t cry when the balls came flying in her direction, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling it.

I had my older children throw back every ball they could find.  They did that until there was a reasonable amount of balls in the water.  Then they started playing with them.  The baby and I had moved out of the danger zone, started bobbing around and playing.  She was cold.

I hung in there with her; we didn’t have much longer.  I watched my other children.  Neither of my little girls were up to the swimming test.  The 8 year old got too tired, trying to swim a 25 two different times.  The 7 year old is just not ready for that.  They had a ball in the shallow end splashing around with their friends.

My little boy was doing what he usually does; staying out of the pool for the most part.  He was a major offender in the ball wars, pulling them out of the bin and filling the pool–from the outside.

The older kids let loose a little.  They even had a couple races.  The girl won the first one, and the boy blamed it on the goggles, so they switched goggles and tried again.  The girl won again.  She’s 17, he’s 14.  He’s not quite got the man strength.  I’ll check them again in a year.  They’d lost the joy of swimming years ago in swim club.  Excursions like this make them glad they swim well.

I still have plenty of work cut out for me in getting the young ones up to speed.  8 year old has halfway decent form, but no stamina.  Doesn’t that sound familiar?  I know the cure for that–going swimming!

Ever get that feeling like you’re not really ready to swim, but it’s now or never?  That’s kind of where I am these days.  I got up around 3:45, but didn’t head out to the pool until just before 6.  I thought I’d have to shoot across town when I found the street in front of the Y closed, but it was just the street, not the Y.

It is definitely getting easier.  I am not struggling through that first set of freestyle.  My flip turns are getting more routine, although I did have a funky too close to the wall thing where I bumped my heel on the edge of the pool.  This was followed by a too far from the wall turn that had me inhaling chlorine through my nose and struggling to come up above water after the turn.

I didn’t want to be a wimp about it, but I stopped doing flip turns after that one.

My IM times are the big story:  My first IM time was 1:41.20–3 seconds faster than my previous best time!  My second IM time was very close to my old best time:  2:44.66.  That performance kept me motivated to finish my set at 1600, even though I was tired enough to want to stop at 1500.

Since I swam 100 more yards than last time, I not only reached my goal of swimming 500 free total yards.  I ended up swimming 525 both free and back.

My next goal is to swim 1700.  I’m not sure whether I’ll accomplish that this week; I’m running/walking in a girls on the Run 5k on Thursday, so it just depends on whether I feel up to swimming strenuously or not.

I had my suspicions that my last workout was harder because of what I’d eaten the night before.  Today I went swimming after having had my meat-free dinner.  hmmmm

It should also be noted that I started swimming an hour after I had started on Tuesday.  So, which is it?  Sleep or food?  I must do further research.

I really had a much easier time swimming this time around.  My IM times were faster:  2:47.06 the first time and 2:46.51 the second time!  I thought about swimming another IM; I used to swim four in a sesson, but I am really getting on a roll swimming more freestyle and back stroke, so I went with that.  By my last couple of sets I was debating whether I should swim an extra freestyle lap to round the yardage of that stroke off at 500.  In the end I decided against it and to just ease up to 500 week by week, like I do with everything else in swimming.

I swam a total of 1500 yards, 475 of it freestyle, 475 back, 300 breast, 50 fly, and 200 elementary back.  Next week’s goal:  1600 total, 500 free and back, and to decrease that elementary count!  Another good reason not to swim any more IM’s.  I ‘pad’ my IM’s in elementary back stroke–I swim a 50 elementary before and after each IM.  If I could add the IM without the elementary back stroke, that would be good.

I continued to practice flip turns today.  Now they’re getting routine from front to back, and I even did a few back to back.  I still need to work on front to front and back to front turns as well as shallow end turns.  It is mentally stimulating to have a problem to work out!  I look forward to my next swim.

It feels like all swim workouts have an element of swimming while tired, but today I was above and beyond tired.  It was a combination of having gotten up an hour earlier than I had hoped, and the heavy dinner I felt on my stomach in the 6 o’clock hour.

But that was too bad.  I pushed through the fatigue to do my set.  The one place I gave myself grace was on my yardage.  Rather than push myself to swim 1500 total yards, I swam 1400 again, as I’d swum on Friday.

My IM times were slower than last time:  2:51.56 and 2:51.51–at least I was consistent!

I also worked on my flip turns, but I isolated it to the front to back variety, rather than the other way around, or back to back or front to front.  I got the hang of taking one last big breath before going into a turn, hurrying up as I went into the turn, and then, after the turn, doing butterfly kick to get myself up and floating on my back properly.  I was more comfortable doing these turns by the end of my set.

Ever since I started going swimming with my daughter, I have been pulling harder in my freestyle, and it has made all the difference.  Rather than stroke with bent arms, I fully extend them, having them almost straight when they enter the water.  I feel myself gliding better, moving across the water faster, and my breathing is even coming easier.  What a relief!  It has been a long time coming.  I ended up with 450 yards total freestyle and backstroke again today.  Next time I go swimming, I want to push the freestyle up to 500.  I might do the same thing with the backstroke.