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. . .