I’m doing a sprint triathlon in the beginning of May, and I really need to get back on a swimming schedule. I can half-ass the bike and run parts of a triathlon, but if I don’t reach a certain performance level on the swim, there’s a fairly good chance I’ll drown. The problem is that the pool at 24 Hour Fitness is pretty crowded in the early morning and after work. Because of this, I hadn’t been swimming in quite some time. I decided today to pack my gym bag and swim some laps at lunch time.

Amazingly, I actually went.

Predictably, my swim was a disaster.

I have a love/hate relationship with swimming. At this precise moment, I am firmly planted on the “hate” end of that. When I am swimming routinely, and not training for a specific event (which seems to send me into a panic), swimming is my favorite form of exercise. It relaxes me and, because I cannot see myself when I’m in the pool, I can trick myself into thinking I am fluid and smooth in the water. When I am not swimming regularly, I flail and gasp and wonder why no one around me seems concerned at all for my well being or the fact that at any moment I could sink permanently below the surface of the water.

I know it will feel better once I get back into the swing of things. I remind myself that two years ago I was so fast and focused in the swimming portion of my race that I actually lost track of my distance and swam an extra lap. A volunteer had to reach into the pool, grab me, and fling me onto the concrete pool deck like a beached whale. That may not sound like a good memory, but I was really fast that year!

I also know that as bad as my form was in the pool today, it could be worse. The last time I went to the pool the man in the lane next to me was wearing a t-shirt, cargo shorts and a baseball hat. It goes without saying that he dragged a little in the water. Then there’s Kabluey. Several months back I was trying to give her some pointers on the freestyle stroke. I had watched a video of Australian Olympian Ian Thorpe (”The Thorpedo”), and decided the knowledge gained from that YouTube video, plus a handful of novice triathlons, qualified me to give her instruction in the pool. Even after extensive schooling from me, she swims with her body in an “L” shape, with her torso parallel to the surface of the water and her legs perpendicular. A Thorpedo, she is not.

Rather than simply dwell on my poor performance in the pool, I like to diversify my feelings of inadequacy, so it was perfect that I had a soccer game tonight. I did lots of running and kicking (by kicking I mean swinging my leg in the general direction of the ball, and by no means am I implying that I regularly made contact) and at the end I was tired and sweaty and wondering how many seasons I have to play before my soccer skills make themselves known.

Now, before I call it a day, I’m thinking I should attempt to do a few more things I am bad at. Like math problems. Or piano scales. Or writing in cursive.

Tags: soccer, triathlon training