Too Tired to Think

It's only 9:00 AM and I'm already too tired to think. Why? Because I got my lazy butt down to the pool this morning at 6:00 AM, that's why. If I'm going to do this IM, I'm gonna have to start the training now, at least for the swim part of the race.

I just learned how to swim a few years ago. Growing up on a farm in Kansas meant I had chores to do every morning and my parents never signed up me up for swim lessons. I never thought it was a big deal until I got into triathlons (duh!). In fact, I avoided triathlons for many years because of the swim. I can bike and run fairly well but just can't swim.

So, I signed up for Master's swim a few years ago. My husband has been swimming with this group for almost 10 years now. They swim every Mon and Weds morning at 6:15 AM (which means I have to get up at 5:00 to drink enough coffee to be able to find my swimming suit). But I quit after a few sessions because I was so bad AND because I got sooooo cold in the water. I hated it. No, I despised it.

But over the years I was slowly lulled into thinking that I might actually like swimming if I gave it another go. I found that I did like it in the summer time. I would swim at noon at our local 50-meter pool. I liked it only because I was the only one there and I could flail around in the water as much as I wanted and no one was there to laugh!

So I naively signed up for the Greeley Triathlon. I picked this one because the swim was in a pool, not a lake. At the time I had not done any lake swims yet. Jumping into a lake was just way too scary. And the swim was only 500 yards or something like that so I thought "piece of cake". HA! I thought I was going to die when I did it.

Long story short, I did my first lake swim with several Greeley tri folks (see earlier post) in Windsor. It was scary, there's no doubt about it. But I wanted to do triathlons bad enough that I just did it. The water was soooo cold and not being able to see the bottom freaked me out but I just put my face in the water and started swimming. Fast forward a few years and I now have 4-5 triathlons under my belt, including my first half-ironman distance last August in Boulder. I'm not a good swimmer but I can do it and I actually enjoy swimming in a lake (never thought I'd say that!).

Today I swam only 1000 yards. We got there a little too late to get the whole workout in. Kurt follows the workout that Richard Hess, our coach, has for the group and I just do my own thing. I actually tried to keep up with them today but I'm just too slow. But at least I got myself down there! My plan is to swim 2 days/week throughout the winter to build up my arm/shoulder strength and then swim 3 days/week next summer, with at least one of those days as a lake swim. Our Greeley Tri club has several members that swim in the Windsor lake 1-3x/week so that makes it easy when there's a group of us out there.

I'll try to get a run in today as well. Need to work off the lovely French dessert a friend of mine made for us last night (chocolate pear tart)....thanks, Rhonda! It was fabulous.