Well, for vanity reasons, I missed swimming two weeks ago.  It was Thanksgiving week, so I had to move my hair appointment up a few days, and I’m not trying to swim after getting my hair done.  ahem.

Given that I’d missed a week–and it killed me to miss that week, trust me–I was apprehensive about actually adding 100 yards this week.

As usual, I just took it as it came, and was able to swim 1400 total.  I also accomplished my goal of swimming more laps of ‘legitimate’ strokes, decreasing my laps of elementary back stroke.  So, even though it was exhausting, I was able to swim 375 yards of both freestyle and back, and only 250 of elementary back!  I also swam 325 breast, and the usual 75 fly.  Next time, I think I’ll push myself to swim 4 100 IMs, or a combination of IMs, and what I call IM split, which is an IM that I interrupt with a cool down lap of elementary back.

I was also able to shave more than 5 seconds off my IM time, by finishing it at 2.49.17, down from 2.54.24.  I pressed my watch to start timing me, then I kind of zoned out and didn’t push off the wall until 4 seconds had passed!  I reset the timer and started over again.  I wonder if my time last time was the result of something like that?

I felt good enough to swim a second 100 IM, but not for time.  I would have to have something to record two separate times in order to do that.  I think my watch has the capability, but I don’t know how to do it.  Must ask my son.  He would know, somehow.

Next time, 1500.  I’m closing in on the 1 mile mark.

In 1992, I took a trip to California with my husband and baby. I couldn’t wait to share my love of swimming with my baby girl. I had thought she, at 5 months, must have had memories of being in the womb. Surely, she was a natural swimmer.

She couldn’t swim at all. She didn’t even kick or move her arms. I became terrified.

A few years later, we had our second child, a baby boy. We lived in a townhouse complex with a pool, and it was the hottest summer ever. We were at the pool daily. My little girl was afraid of the water and chose to spend her time outside of the pool. The baby was the opposite. He had no fear at all and tooled around the pool in a baby inner tube. We had neighbors that had three young children that could all swim–including their 1 year old son. She suggested blowing over the baby’s mouth and nose, causing them to inhale and hold their breath. She even tried that with my baby, and it worked, but I couldn’t do it right. She was the one that gave me the baby inner tube, though, and the baby loved it.

One day while the two of us were in the pool, I saw my three year old daughter fall in the shallow end of the pool. I rushed over and pulled her out by the head, terrified. She was fine, but shaken up a bit. We had taken baby and me swim classes at the Y the summer before, and I’d learned enough to know that babies can’t take real Y swim lessons until they’re 3. They couldn’t take Red Cross swim lessons until 5. I remembered how I never learned how to swim at the Y, but finally made the connection in Red Cross lessons. I waited until she was 5.

She was really scared of the water by the time we started.

To be continued. . .

Yesterday I was equal parts looking forward to and dreading my workout. I still love swimming, but I was feeling tired and out of shape before I even reached the pool. Then I started missing the baby, and, . . .what was I saying?

The 1st 100: So I tried to do my own workout for moms over 40, like I talked about here. Right off the bat, I got tired. I set out to swim a 100 free, but did a 50 and flipped over unto my back. I felt more comfortable on my back and stayed there a minute.

The 2nd 100: I broke this down into 25s, alternating free and back.

The 3rd 100: I attempted to do 100 breast, but was so exhausted after the first 50 that I finished up this set with 50 elementary back.

The 4th 100: By now, I was feeling good to get 300 under my belt and was ready to swim the 100 IM. I was even going to time it. I pressed something on my watch and pushed off the wall into a freestyle streamline. Wait a minute, I thought! This is an IM; I’m supposed to be doing the butterfly. I walked back to the wall. My watch was adding time to the last thing I’d timed. I reset it, pushed the button, and started the IM properly. Just before I started the third stroke, breaststroke, I noticed another person in my lane. Not that they politely tapped my shoulder and informed me they would be joining me. No, they were just swimming. I hesitated, wondering if we were swimming circles or sides, and then moved over and swam that length. I was just gearing up for the freestyle length when I saw another person in the lane! I hugged the wall and finished out my IM at 3:04.20.

The 5th 100: Disappointed that I’d added nearly 2 seconds to my last IM time, I started my cool down 100. I swam 100 elementary back stroke, more or less, hugging the wall and scared I’d hit someone with my flailing elementary back arms and legs.

The 6th 100: I really wanted to quit at this point. Sharing a lane zapped my confidence to work on the IM again. I swam 2 5 free and 75 back.

The 7th 100: I was torn between quitting after this length and continuing on to 800; I try to pick up 100 every time I swim, and I’d swum 700 last time. I did 50 breast in pretty raggedy form and finished up the set with backstroke kick.

The 8th 100: I felt restored after the back kick and decided to finish strong. I swam alternating freestyle and back stroke. I noticed that I only shared the lane with one other person, and she was swimming freestyle at a steady pace.

I couldn’t believe I’d made it through 800 with so little elementary back stroke. It turned out to be a good thing that I had to share the lane; that forced me to swim more freestlye and less elementary back, the filler stroke. At this point I’m only swimming once every two weeks or so. You gotta start somewhere.

It is good to have a goal, direction. When I started swimming, my goal was small—to be able to swim 100 yards without stopping. That was actually not that easy at first. I began to understand what my kids went through in swimming. After I achieved that goal, I wanted to be able to swim 300 yards. My last achieved goal was 2000 yards.

Somewhere along the line I decided to swim elementary back stroke in order to keep moving, keep breathing, and keep reaching towards my goal. I got used to the low level fatigue you have for the whole workout.

Now I found out I was on the right track. According to this website, that’s the way you build up to swimming a mile. Swim any stroke, later to be substituted with crawl, or freestyle, as it’s called in competitive swimming. I have been really slow to do that part. I have gotten used to all the elementary back stroke, or what I call my cool-down laps.

But the swim a mile in 6 weeks program looks pretty doable. I have been off my swim schedule since I had a baby in March. I will try this program and write about my progress when I get back to the pool.

There was this family at swimming that started just the summer before my kids started swim club. When I say ‘started,’ I mean that they started in the competitive swim club. They had a boy my daughter’s age, 10 at the time, and a son the same age as our son, 7 at the time. Both boys were regular fish, swimming at the top of their age group. My kids struggled to get to the top of the middle.

I asked their mother about their swim background, and she said this was their first time really swimming, but they used to spend every summer on the lake.

My daughter just went to her friend’s house for a running club. Her friend lives on the lake, so she promised there would be swimming after the running. The girls ended up going tubing, my daughter’s first time.

We have friends that include tubing and water skiing as part of every summer activity. And swimming came easy to them, too.

Yet I feel like such a weirdo for liking water parks.

My point is that swimming is part of a water loving lifestyle. There’s a lot of talk about black people not having access to pools, and that being a barrier to swimming in our community. But I think there’s more to it than economics. I think that the lifestyle of being in the sun and around water is not one that many of us choose.

I remember going to the park with my mother and sister in law and looking out over the lake at the park. I could see docks and boats and houses on the other side of the lake, and I dreamed out loud about having a lake house some day. Neither my mother or sister in law was the least bit interested in that. My husband likes the idea of owning a boat, even though the idea of swimming in a small, man-made lake is completely unappealing to him. And forget about water parks! He’s done after a couple hours, whereas I could be at the water park all day.

Maybe it’s a cycle: don’t like the water, ’cause can’t swim, so I don’t like water. . .

And I’ll tell you that I don’t get the whole lying out in the sun thing. It’s hot, sweaty and boring. But the idea of not going to the beach or the lake ever is not cool. There are so many interesting things to do in the world of water.

Why a swimming blog? Well, for some reason, I’m passionate about swimming. I get what the deal is with swimming, even if it’s hard to explain. Maybe if I go back and recount my story it will make more sense.

When I was in Kindergarten, I went to a private school. We went swimming every Friday. I remember being scared to death, and dreading Fridays. Once, I even made myself throw up so I didn’t have to swim. It wasn’t swimming so much as going up and down the pool with a kickboard.

Then I remember going to the Y with my family when I was in the first grade. I watched a man dive off the side of the pool. That looked cool, I thought. Let me try! I hit the water hard, SPLAT! I found out about belly flops the hard way. I didn’t know what I had done wrong.

Around 4th grade, I found myself in another swim class. This time we did something unique—we swam up and down the pool with kickboards. My friend Charlotte had a different swimming story. Her parents threw her in the pool as a baby, and she swam around like a fish.

I wanted to learn how to swim so bad I could taste it in my mouth. Yet I kept getting older and older, and it just didn’t seem to click. What did a kickboard have to do with actual swimming?

to be continued. . .