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!

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.

Even as I wrote last time about every workout being swim practice, there was a part of my training I’d neglected.  I am really bad at flip turns, and it is a source of embarrassment for me.

My swim team trained kids haven’t been much help in the past.  My son just thinks I’m pitiful, while my daughter would admonish me not to flail my arms so much.

But now she’s swimming with me, and she is much more helpful.  She even went down the lane with me, she on kickboard, I swimming freestyle.  First she corrected my error of taking a last ditch effort front facing breath before going into the turn.  She had told me not to do that before, that it slows you way down.  But this time, she also told me what to do instead:  take a big breath on the last breath and then go into the turn.  I’ve been working on my breathing enough that this is doable now.

Turning from the back is tricky.  I’d watched Coach Vince tell the kids to count their backstroke to the wall and turn around on the last stroke.  I know that after the flags, I have five strokes before I should turn over to go into my flip turn.  But my turns, especially in shallow water are very clumsy.  In the shallow water, I go way too deep after the turn and brush the bottom of the pool.  In the deep water, I try to come up too soon, and inhale water through my nose.  Talk about a chlorine headache!  And a mistake like that usually means I’m done practicing flip turns for the day!

I was driven to perfect them this time.  My competitive drive got the better of me.  I saw another black woman in the pool.  She was a good swimmer, who did effortless flip turns.  Here I am with my stroke getting more and more refined, yet I can’t do a basic flip turn.  Flip turn, thy time has come!

On another note, I decreased my back stroke by another stroke, sometimes 2, and it did translate to better IM times.  My first IM came in at 2:45.88, and my second time was even better, if only slightly:  2:45.05.  I also increased my freestyle and backstroke yardage to 400 each. My total yardage for the day was 1300.

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.