I have a dream.  That dream is to one day compete in triathlons.  Of course, I at first just want to take part in triathlons, but the ultimate goal would be to actually be competitive.

I should maybe learn to run, huh?  I would also like to have some of the children compete in triathlons.  That’s just one reason I signed my 8 year old daughter up for Girls on the Run (GOTR).  We meet twice a week to train for a 5k in May.  This daughter is not much for running–unlike her other 3 sisters!  So she needs quite a bit of encouragement, namely in the form of my running alongside her cajoling her every step of the way.

But I’m 42, with a history of knee injury and sciatic nerve problems, so this is just big happy fun for me.  Did I mention that I’m quite a bit overweight?  Yeah.

What this means for swimming is that my left knee has been perpetually sore since starting GOTR approximately a month ago.  For those of you following at home, I basically replaced my neck pain (from the 200 sit-up challenge and tae bo) with the knee pain from running.

And swimming again serves as rehab for me.  So, while I, to my great disappointment didn’t swim the elusive  mile, I did feel much better when I got out of the pool.

I ended up swimming 900 yards, or half a mile, my knee hurting at first.

Today I also took my oldest and youngest daughters with me.  Youngest daughter, at 12 months, just won’t sleep peacefully at home while I jump up to go swimming at the crack of dawn.  So, I took her to the pool along with a babysitter.  I had an ulterior motive.  My oldest daughter has great swim technique.  So she gave me much wanted feedback on my strokes.

She says I bend my arms too much on the freestyle, and my back and breast strokes look good.  My butterfly?  Looks weak and sorry.  My abs haven’t yet recovered from the last baby.  Hence, the 200 situp challenge. . .

My times on my IMs were also slow:  3:03.02 for the first one, and 3:05.24 on the second one.  Then I decided that the butterfly was too rough on my knee and stuck with flutter kick strokes.

As always, the whirlpool hit the spot after the workout.  I hope to return to the pool with my girls on Thursday.

Over on my other blog, I told the story of trying to get in shape.   A tragic story, really, resulting in much pain and suffering.

I have laid off the working out for a few days, hoping my neck would stop hurting.  No such luck.  So I thought I’d go swimming today and knock that pain right on out.

I carefully, slowly swam a lap of  freestyle.  I thought I’d feel it in the neck when it came to breathing, and I did.  I switched to backstroke.  I imagined myself swimming a whole mile of backstroke–it felt so good to be in the water!

I swam on, and somewhere around the 250 yard mark, my neck started hurting even swimming backstroke.  I tried a length of breast stroke.  It still hurt.  I tried a length of elementary back, and even a length of sidestroke.  I got out of the pool after that one, having only swum 350.

I went to the hot tub and soaked my sore muscles.   Good news!  The pain is going away.  I hope to return to the pool on Thursday for a real workout.

It seems longer. . .

More challenges to getting to the pool this week almost convinced me to forget it altogether.  I mean, it’s gotten colder outside, we’re getting up an out later these days, etc.  Cry me a river.  I put the baby back in the crib at 5:30, told my son to listen for her, and took myself to the pool.

I got in and swam a 25 before I checked my watch.  It was 5:54 when I finished my first length.  My strategy today was to swim 1700 yards with as much freestyle as possible.  So. . . I started with breast stroke!  Go me!

The pool was full when I got there, so I found myself swimming down the middle of the slow lane between an older man and a woman.  I got distracted by trying to swim faster than the woman, and I failed miserably.  The man got out of the pool pretty soon, and by the time I was swimming my second IM or so, I noticed I was the only person in the pool.

That was short-lived.  Three young people (swim team kids) started training, and the other lanes filled up as well.  I missed my chance to change lanes–something I used to do a lot when I first started swimming.

I was tired and almost sore starting out.  Did that have to do with the fact that I’d done Tae Bo three times this week?  hmm?  And I finished my second week of the 200 sit-up challenge this week?  (btw, ’2 weeks’ on that challenge has actually taken me 4 weeks to finish, so boo me)

I don’t know, but that might have had something to do with  my muscle fatigue.  I pushed through it, though, thinking of  Dori’s mantra:  (from Finding Nemo):  ‘keep swimming!’

My IM times were more consistent, if unspectacular:  2.53.20, 2.55.88, 2.53.36, and 2.55.20.  My sluggishness showed, I think in those times.

I was at the 1000 yard mark when I finished the IMs.  The rest of the workout consisted of my trying to gain yardage without a lot of elementary back stroke, my relaxing, cooldown type stroke.  I was pretty successful, only adding 50 more elementary back stroke out of 700 yards.

I found a better way to look at swimming freestyle, too.  I concentrated on blowing the air out of my mouth, rather than my nose, and I had an easier time.  I have a hard time trying to work the breathing out of my mouth and blowing out of my nose rhythm every three strokes.  I don’t know.  Must be me.  I’m also working on improving my arm movement during the breast stroke.  I’m sure I have way too much wasted movement there.  It’s fun to refine strokes in the midst of trying to get something done.

In the end, it was 7:02.  I’d swum 1700 yards, and my shoulders and triceps were sore.  I plan to swim again next week.  Goal:  1800 yards, 1 mile!

It’s been challenging to get to the pool this week.  Mondays are always out. On Tuesday, I knew I was going grocery shopping and didn’t want to do that with wet hair.  Yesterday I got rolling too late to make it to the pool.  My hair appointment’s today, so it was today or not at all for two more weeks.

I got going at a decent hour, and made it to the pool around 5:40 A.M.  The road was blocked.  No problem, I thought.  I drove around the back way.  The parking lot was pretty empty, and a woman looked at me as she got in her car.  “The water main broke,” I heard her tell someone else when I opened my car door.  “So the Y’s closed?” I asked.  “Well, yeah, ” she said, surprised at my bluntness.

It was still early.  I decided to drive across town to the other Y.  I got there at 6.  Every lane was occupied, but a man told me he was finishing up when I entered the pool area.  I thanked him and started swimming.  He was done before I finished my first lap.

I had the goal of increasing my freestyle in mind, along with the idea that maybe I should warm up doing a stroke other than freestyle.  I started out with breast stroke, then back stroke, then freestyle.  The freestyle still wiped me out!  I ended up taking a panting break in the middle of my 100 free, feeling like a big wimp.

I knew I wanted to increase my freestyle yardage, but I also wanted to swim my usual 4 100 IMs and time them, so I decided to add the freestyle to the back end of the set, after the IMs.  My times were:  2:55.29, 2:49.14, 2:51.56, and 2:58.61.  Nothing spectacular, compared with the last time I swam, but the real significance of this workout was getting through it.  I was beat.  That may have to do with the fact that the baby woke up three times in the night, most recently at 3:45, and I didn’t go back to sleep after that time.

In the end,  I swam more elementary back stroke than anything else, boo for me!  I swam the same 400 freestyle yards that I had last time, and actually decreased my yardage in back and breast strokes.  And I swam 1600 total yards, just like last time, forgetting that I was supposed to swim 1700.

Was it worth it, even will all these missteps?  You bet.  My message this week?  Just get to the pool.

So I went swimming again this morning. I stepped into the pool at 5:50, and out of the pool at 6:52. I love my (Timex Ironman) watch, if I must say.

I knew that today was a swim team day at the Y, so that at some point in the 6 o’clock hour, the pool would be full, so I got in the slow lane, the double lane near the door that they reserve for lap swimming even during swim team practice.

I had the lane to myself at first, but I was soon joined by an older man doing the doggie paddle. I’m one of those folks that likes to swim near the wall. Call me crazy, but it’s probably left over from my days as a non-swimmer. Gotta make sure the wall is still there, you see?

ahem.

I must have swum 200 yards when a woman joined us, swimming down the middle. That kind of thing used to bother me. Now I’m used to it. Or so I thought.

When it came time in my workout to do my IMs, I clicked my watch to time myself. I swam the first 100 IM in 2:57.22. That was much slower than last week, when I swam it at 2:50 and some change. That was discouraging.  So I decided to time my second IM. 2:58.46. Wow!

I accepted the fact that no matter what I did, each IM would be slower than the last, and I was just having an off day. My third IM was even slower: 3:00.75. Then the old man left the pool. The only way I could tell was that the woman had moved over. I moved over. More specifically, I moved off the wall, which I had been hugging for most of my set. I timed my fourth IM. 2:52.37. That was more like it! That was more in line with last week.

Who knew? The wall can slow you down that much. In fact, the wall was an even bigger factor than stopping to catch my breath before the last length.

I can’t say enough good things about that watch. . .

btw, I reached two goals in the pool this morning:  to swim 1500 overall, and to swim a 100 free in my warmup.  Next goal:  to swim 100 free in warmup and cool down.

“Mommy, will you take me swimming someday?” My number four child is so sweet. I have a hard time resisting her. I told her if she could get her school done quickly yesterday (Friday), I would take her to the Y.

It was on. The two little girls, 6 and 8 finished their homeschool at record pace. I had to convince the 4 year old boy to come along; he doesn’t swim yet and is a little scared of the water. I thought one teenager would be a good help, and I was surprised when my 17 year old daughter volunteered. She usually opts to protect the ‘do, but as it’s our hairdresser’s holiday break, we’re three weeks out between appointments now. Of course I wanted to bring waterbaby; she has the cutest swimsuit ever, and she really likes the water.

We got to the Y shortly after open swim began, and I almost lost my temper in the rush to the pool. I’d thought ahead and had the little girls and myself already in our suits, but just the act of dressing 4 year old and 9 month old was trying. 4 year old can dress himself, but he’d rather not, and then had to go potty, thought he couldn’t get out of the stall. .

So I walked us all past the shower, thinking foolishly that we could avoid getting our hair wet at a pool!

We saw our next door neighbor kids and their uncle at the pool right away. .. and a pool full of other people, many of them black. This is usually the case at open swim, now that I think about it; the pool so crowded that you can’t really swim.

But I try to have my young swimmers practice their strokes. My six year old kicked so hard above the water that she got my hair wet immediately, along with all the faces in her path. I urged her to kick underwater, and she swam much better.

The baby was content to be held and chew on her sister’s goggles. She was NOT happy when her sister needed her goggles, however. The 4 year old was reminding me of his big sister before she learned how to swim–”I got water in my ear!” and he kept trying to get out of the pool, despite wearing a cube and floaties on each arm. I had him play chase the ball around the pool, to his dismay, but eventually he got into it, and was actually tooling around the pool without much trouble.

8 year old was constantly checking how deep the pool was, seeing if she could stand, underwater stealth stuff. I asked her to swim breast stroke and butterfly, and found she can’t butterfly yet. 17 year old didn’t really want to teach her sisters the fly either. She wanted to play basketball, but there were a bunch of dudes monopolizing the hoop, and she had siblings to supervise, so she let that alone.

6 year old got tired of really swimming and grabbed too many noodles and started trying to make them into a raft. She kept going under them and running into people, and in general had a ball!

Before we exited the pool, I counted 17 black people and 12 white people in the pool.  And smiling faces all around.