The Joy of Swimming

Arizona 08, peeking at the watch, chanting 

I will not cry if it's over an hour. 

I will not cry if it's over an hour.. (and looking like I have four arms)

There are two kinds of swimmers: those who swam as kids, and those who didn't. And few people who didn't seem to make the jump to the amazing times of those that did. My husband falls into the did camp. He can train for two weeks, jump into a 2.4 mile race and swim sub-50. There are special words for people like him that I won't use here.

I am a non-swimmer. For the first two years of triathlon, I didn't bother. I kind of liked being last out and playing catch up. I joined a masters group my third year and swam twice a week. This is my fourth year and thus probably time I learn to swim.

I asked local swimstar Flanagan what I needed to do to get under the hour mark, which would mean 5-9 minutes off my previous IM swim times. This was around the time when he was training for the open water Olympic trials and I could only talk to him in 5-10 sec blurbs in between the intervals he did all day long. He told me to get in the water a minimum of four times a week. I told him that would ruin my hair. But I listened.. swimming twice as much as I ever had before.. and totally ruined my hair.  I learned how to do flip turns without knocking myself out. And like smartypants Paulo likes to preach, sometimes more is indeed more. In those 4 months of swimming, my 100 meter time fell from 1:31 to 1:16. Wipe the tears of laughter from your eyes, swimmer people, I know that isn't anywhere near fast. But in Arizona, with the help of my Blue Seventy Helix Cheater Suit, I rolled in at 58:43.  And yes, I swam around all the buoys. I think I smiled through the entire first loop of the bike. The majority of the texts and emails received at the end of that day were of the "When the hell did you learn to swim?" variety.

Next goal: Sub-hour at Kona without the help of the Cheater Suit. And five days a week.

You might notice that I didn't actually mention any Joy in The Swimming in my little swim success story. So here's what I've got: I saw a shark in a swim race last winter, so that was cool. Oh and once I found $5 in the ocean. And that's about it for nice things I can say about swimming. There are so many better things to do in the ocean.. like the paddling I did for ten years. Here's some cross training I did in March. (See the ruined hair? And the smiling? Do you ever see people swimming and smiling?)

(Thanks Joss & Title Nine)