So last week I had a setback.  My baby was sick, so I stayed home with her on my usual swimming days.  She was feeling better on Saturday, so I went swimming then.  My oldest daughter had a 9 AM appointment, so I felt like starting at 7 AM it would be pushing it to get a mile done in time.  So I went into the workout thinking I would quit before a mile.  But after I finished that first 900, I decided to go for it.  I got home in time for her to make it to her appointment!

I remember learning to swim at the ripe old age of 12, and how I had thought it would mean I could finally do all the strokes.  Like the cool strokes.  Like butterfly.  But, alas–my advanced beginner class stopped at breast stroke.  They threw in a side stroke, which is not a competitive stroke, but no butterfly.  I was excited to see my children learn to swim butterfly (fly) while doing swim team.  My daughter especially took to it.  Not to say she liked swimming it or anything, but she was good at it.  My son had shown such promise in learning the kick, but couldn’t deliver with his arms.  I wish he’d continued swimming; he’d probably be much stronger in fly by now.

So what I learned about fly I learned from watching the kids in swim practice, and listening to their coaches.  The kick is a wiggling of your whole body, not really doing anything with your feet.  You do this undulating while your arms are in streamline, clasped at the wrist and arms over your ears.  Your head is underwater at this point.  To take a breath, you pull your arms back, pull your head up and then kind of dive your hands back in the water over your head, in the streamline again.  It feels kind of awkward at first, and definitely like a shoulder workout.  I can do about three kicks per breath at this point, sometimes four.

I don’t do any butterfly lengths by themselves.  I only do them as part of an Individual Medley (IM).  In the IM, you swim 25 fly, 25 back, 25 breast, and 25 free–in that order.  I feel like, even though I should be practicing to swim freestyle for long stretches of time, I am actually training to swim IMs.  I swim two actual IMs, but in other parts of my set, I swim the strokes in IM order, like breast, free, back, breast.  The effect is that I have an easier time swimming the IM faster, because I’m so used to the order of the strokes.

I feel like the ultimate swim geek being so into the IM.  I remember being giddy when my daughter got to compete in IMs.  Never mind that she hated every minute of it.  Her stroke was good enough to swim all four competitive strokes in one race!  That was great, especially considering how she had started off a scared little 5 year old who couldn’t bear to get her face wet.  My fearless son also got to compete in IMs, but his breast stroke wasn’t consistently legal, so sometimes I’d watch him win his race only to get disqualified later.

Anyway, watching them compete in IMs made me want to swim it so much I could taste it.  I was so excited to finally get in the pool and swim the 100 IM myself.  And then I found out how truly exhausting it is!  I would find myself panting and praying in the deep end before forcing myself to swim that final freestyle.  It is still hard for me, but I can usually make it down the final length before I’m breathless and panting.

Then I reward myself with a lap of elementary back stroke.  This is totally a cool down stroke for me.  My goal is to be breathing normally at the end of this lap.  Sometimes I am; sometimes I’m still catching my breath at the end of the 50.

I only timed one IM on Saturday.  I finished at 2:42.08, which was pretty consistent with what I’ve been swimming lately.  But it wiped me out so much that I didn’t want to push myself the second time I swam the IM.

Lately, I have been more tired than usual in the pool.  And I recently found out that I have a good reason for that.  I am pregnant again.  With number 8.  My last pregnancy was the first time I got to swim up until delivery, and it made such a big difference in labor and delivery!  So plan to keep swimming this time, too.