I still feel so exhilarated when I  get to go swimming!  Even when every stroke feels more sluggish than the last one.

Today was one of those days.  I felt my dinner weighing on my stomach even at 6:30 AM when I took to the pool.  It didn’t help that the pool was so crowded that my daughter and I shared a single lane.  I hugged the wall so tough that I even hit the ladder on my flip turn.

I did manage to swim 1200 yards overall, though, and I swam my second IM faster than my first.  My IM times were:  2:50.60 and 2:48.08.  I was feeling triumphant shaving my time like that!  I felt so good that I gave my daughter my watch, (and her goggles, which I now use), and told her to time her IM while I did my cool down lap.  Mind you, she hadn’t planned on swimming an IM.  Chilling is her MO in the pool these days.  But she swam a 100 IM faster than I swam a 50 elementary back.  Her time?  1:33.83.  I have no idea how competitive that is with serious swimmers.  But compared to me?  Get outta here!  I love to have that time to motivate me.

I am reminded that every swim workout (for me, at least) is actually swim practice.  I am practicing my strokes, modifying here and there, working on being consistent, shaving seconds or strokes every chance I get.

One thing I definitely need to practice is flip turns.  I am no good at them.  I usually panic and avoid them altogether, but today, I forced myself to practice them.  At one point I found myself thrashing around, inhaling water as the result of pulling out of a flip turn too soon.

It reminds me of my days as a music major.  A music major must spend hours a day practicing, and the practice area consists of hundreds of tiny rooms adjoining each other.  It is impossible not to hear the person in the room on either side of you practicing.  I was always scared someone was listening to me, critiquing my skills.  Then, one summer, I got a job at the school, and had an office in the practice room area.  I heard this horn player working on the same solo over and over.  I started wondering if he knew that everyone had already heard his solo ad infinitum.  Suddenly, it clicked for me that he was only concerned with refining his performance, not whether someone was listening!

The same is true in the pool.  As much as I worry that everyone is watching me and laughing, it’s more likely that no one is paying me any attention.  They are busy following their own black line at the bottom of the pool.  Not even my own daughter, sharing a lane with me, noticed everything I was doing.

So, self consciousness is no excuse for not learning flip turns.

Now, fatigue, on the other hand. . .

The last couple of times I’ve been swimming, I’ve had my oldest and youngest daughters tag along.  The oldest, because the youngest won’t sleep all the way through like she used to.

I had hoped in the back of my mind that it would make my oldest want to get in the water again.  After all, she’d put in years swimming on  a team, and I thought somewhere deep inside, she missed it.

I was right.  After watching me swim a couple times, she was itching to get back in the pool.  So this morning, we left the baby home with her big brother, and we two went swimming.

Now you know from last week, I can’t help but race the person in the lane next to me—unless it’s my daughter.  Oh my goodness, she swims so fast.  At one point, during my first IM, she beat me getting down the pool on a kickboard(!) versus my butterfly, my fastest stroke!  My times were slower today, too.  My first IM clocked in at 2:50.30, and my second one at 2:57.20.  I did notice that I’ve managed to shave one stroke off my backstroke, meaning, it used to take me 18 strokes to get to the flags, and now I can get it done in 17, so I should see better times soon I hope.

My daughter borrowed my watch to time herself swimming a 25 free.  She swam it in 17.68, which is faster than her old time of 18 something.  I don’t expect her to get back into competition anytime soon (I wish), but she is interested in lifeguarding, so that’s good.  She could swim the 500 yards necessary for lifeguard training in her sleep.

In the meantime, I’m working on my 10,000 hours.  That’s the time Malcolm Gladwell calculates it takes to master something.  At the rate I’m going, it’ll be a while.

But then I think about the older people going back and forth in the pool.  Most of them look like they’ve been swimming their whole lives.  They have the whole bouyancy thing down.  They don’t have problems with breathing, and their stroke looks good.

I don’t think I’ll run out of time.  And I’m sure having fun along the way.

When I got to the pool yesterday, I saw my friend Stephani in the lockeroom.  She had just finished her workout.  She told me that she wanted to tell Vince, my kids’ former swim coach that she had actually swum 26 lengths in her triathlon.  I asked her if Vince were her coach, and she told me that she had signed up for swimming lessons with him in October.  She had been in class with 5 year olds, but rather than be humiliated, she wanted to glean everything she could from the great coach Vince Gallant.  I’m sure he would be proud of her accomplishment.

Stephani has the gleam in her eye that you get when you’re hooked on swimming.  She wondered, “What took me so long?”  I know what she means.  Her husband has a bad knee.  Now he swims with Stephani.  He also wonders what took him so long.

She is a mother of 2 in her 40s, and she looks great!  I see older people in the pool every time I go, and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I see the young swim team practicing.  Message?  It’s never too late to start swimming.  (starting early doesn’t hurt, either)

So I hopped in the pool, determined to add to my yardage.  It felt good at first, but I felt that shoulder burning halfway into my set.  Even though I know my ultimate goal is to swim straight freestle, I train as though I am going to compete in the IM.  I am really fascinated with swimming four strokes in that combination!  I timed both of my IMs this time, and was a little slower than last time.  The first time was 2:47.68, and the second one was 2:50.52.  I thought a third would be even slower, but didn’t care to find out.  By then, the shoulder was pretty hot, so I just stayed in the water until I had swum 1100.

I have increased my freestyle yardage and decreased my recovery stroke yardage.  I’m inching towards my goal. I’m sure I’ll be wondering what took me so long by the time I reach it.

So I went swimming today.  And like I do to psych myself up to go in there, I looked to see how many people were in the pool before I went in the locker room.  I saw two black people in the pool, maybe three.  I wondered if I knew who they were.

When I got to the pool, I saw that the man was my friend Stephani’s husband, and, one lane over, I saw Stephani!  And she had just competed in her first triathlon.  Which I was supposed to go and cheer her on, but I hadn’t put it in my calendar, and therefor, I forgot–until the moment I saw her in the pool.

“Hey!  How’d it go?” I asked her.  She told me that she was disappointed in how she’d placed.  She was surprised at how competitive she was.  I empathized, agreeing how hard it is to swim next to someone without racing them.  We stopped talking, and she finished her set.  I started mine, and even though I tried not to, I couldn’t help racing her.  Even after we had talked about it.

She climbed out, and I got to work.  It was Wednesday, so I expected the Y swim team to join us and kick me out of my lane.  They were later than I had expected, but they did indeed come, politely asking me to move down a couple lanes.  I was in the middle of my third 100 set.

That race in my warmup set my pace.  I timed my first IM at 2.44.00.  That is the fastest I have swum it.  I didn’t want to erase that time.  I didn’t want to jinx it, so the next IM I swam, I not only didn’t time it, but I also intentionally swam it slow and sloppy.  My left shoulder was still bothering me from my last swim, so I didn’t push myself more than 1000 again.  I hope to swim again on Friday, increasing my yardage.

Stephani came up to me after church one Sunday.  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she said.  “I found out that the local triathlons take joint entries.  I was thinking that you could do the swimming part and I could do the rest.”

I have been entranced by triathlons ever since I first saw them on TV back when I was a lazy teenager.  I knew I would one day grow up to be some workout fanatic, and . . . dreamy-eyed look on my face, trailing off. ..

I never dreamed that triathlons are actually done by normal people.

A few years ago, I met a woman at the kids’ swimming who had actually done a small triathlon.  After I got over idolizing her, I thought, I want to do that!

Then I noticed that the Y was offering a triathlon style workout.  I was still too insecure about my swimming to join the class, but one Saturday, I dragged my daughter in with me to try our own version.  We did it backwards.  We ran on the treadmill for 1/2 hour, then rode the stationary bikes for 1/2 hour, then swam for 1/2 hour.  This was at the height of my fitness before babies #6 an 7, so it was great fun.  I think I ended up swimming 500 yards during that session.

So I’ve been off and on haunting local triathlon websites, thinking ‘one of these days’ I’ll be in shape enough to enter.  Then Stephani and I talked about how fun it would be to do one one of these days.  Now she’s serious.  And I can’t swim much straight freestyle.

Yup.  It’s time to fish or cut bait.  I think I will focus on freestyle the next time I hit the pool, which should be tomorrow.  I’ll let you know how that turns out.

Mind you, these obstacles are not insurmountable.  They just make it a little more difficult.  I was just thinking how I would have loved to have been on my high school swim team (lo so many years ago!), but I thought it was impossible for some of the following reasons:

5.  I can’t swim I ‘m not a strong swimmer

I didn’t know that coaches are willing to work with someone, especially someone with passion for the sport.  That whole deal about you have to swim a LOT of laps is true.  That just makes you stronger, and stronger is a good thing in competitive swimming.

4.  Black people can’t don’t float

Ok, so we have denser bones and muscles.  So that affects buoyancy, but again, strength comes in the picture.  Denser muscle translates into power for speed, something you need in competitive swimming, no?

3. the hair

This is a biggie.  If I had swum in High School, I probably would have joined the ranks of the *bald-headed,* because of the chemicals in the pool clashing with the chemicals in my perm.  But guess what?  Chlorine is bad for everybody’s hair.  Maybe just a little worse for a permed head.  So don’t wear a perm!  Some folks solve the problem by locking their hair.  Others go with extensions.  I wear my hair natural and have it monitored regularly by my hairdresser.  I ultimately chose the pool chemicals over hair chemicals, because I just had to swim!  This is a sport you can do until you’re old.  You can do this if you can’t walk.  It’s like weight training, stretching and running all in one.

2.  the skin

Can you say “ashy?”  You will have to double up on moisturizer, baby oil, vaseline, lotion, etc. if you’re going to swim.  Think of it as spa treatment.

1.  I don’t know anyone who swims. . .

While swimming is a great sport for solitude, (it’s hard to talk and breathe at the same time, heh), it’s also a warm community.  I remember when I started swimming at the Y, I met an older woman who admired my breast stroke.  She invited me out to breakfast with all the other swimmers.  I was so taken aback by being called a swimmer that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Another option is to go with friends.  You all can learn together, or get better together.  I love seeing someone I know at the pool!

My point is, don’t let any of these things stop you.  If you want to swim, go for it!  If you’re looking for a gentle, yet strenuous exercise program, swim!  Try it!  You won’t regret it.