Friday, January 30, 2009

My heroes have always been 6 year olds...

Not really. :-) But, I found out that the kids swimming 2 lanes down from me are actually 10-year olds, not 6-year olds. Either way, they swim pretty darn good...then again, compared to me almost anyone does!

I headed to the pool after work. I was prepared to swim for about 30-35 minutes, then change into running clothes for an easy 20-minutes on the treadmill.

Yeah. Right.

I did my 1st 200 yards pretty quickly...I only stopped to cough and sputter once, I only rested for about 30 seconds between lengths, etc. I did pick my head up out of the water more than I'd like to admit, but managed to get back into the swing of things. Then I got tired. I started getting a cramp in my foot, I had to stop to cough and sputter a couple more times, blah, blah....I did a couple more laps, but this time I tried to relax, stay focused on breathing, and just took it slow. Much better! Sometimes I let my mind wonder which means I forget to think about what I'm supposed to be doing and I start to go into total spaz mode. I'm assuming that the more I practice, the less I'll have to think about it. (At least I hope so!)

After another 300 yds or so, the older man in the lane next to me commented about his shoulder pain messing up his stroke. I told him he looked like he was doing okay, bum shoulder and all. After we exchanged "why I started swimming" stories (he was a runner, but had bad knees), he gave me a few pointers - let your body float, relax, breathe, the "roll" and he gave me some tips on my stroke. He left the pool soon after, so I tried to put a few of the pointers into practice - between my long chat break and the pointers, I seemed to do much better and swam another 100 yds before calling it a day. When I made it back to the locker room, I was beat and decided the run would have to wait. I swam longer than I intended and well, this swimming stuff is tiring (especially when you don't know what you're doing!).

Workout Stats - Thursday, 1/29/09
Swim, YMCA, 24 slow laps = 600 yards

*** Edited to add - It's so funny when I think 600 yards is such a loooonnnnnggggg swim, then I read Viv's blog and see her 1500 yds...holy cow, I can't imagine that distance right now, LOL! And to follow it with the bike!!!

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Swimming is TOTALLY a practice-makes-perfect kind of thing. The more time you spend in the water, the better you'll get. And your swimming fitness will improve rapidly now that you're back at it. :)