Masters swim

I'm back in the pool.... I joined a Masters program at the local Y. I'm an aspiring swimmer. I fake it in the races and beat myself up about it all along the way. I was thinking about taking the entire winter off of swimming.. though I don't feel like I ever REALLY got into it this summer w/ my one night a week in the sound adventure. I decided that I need to spend more time in the pool.

I've decided to go Monday at 5:30am (OUCH) and Tuesday at 8pm. Now I've been getting up a couple mornings a week at 5am to do a 6am workout. I really like to start my day slowly w/ some coffee and a little email and facebook so I get up early. Well, I figured 5:30 isn't that much earlier than 6am... well I'll tell you 4:30am is VERY different than 5am. Why? Who knows. That 4 at the beginning just kills me. It takes me longer to get to the Y than it does my gym ... so if I want my 'quiet time' it's 4:30am. I don't like to hit the ground running.. anyway. I digress. So I set my alarm for p.m. on the first day so I missed the monday a.m. swim and hit the Tuesday p.m. I rolled up and was instructed to follow the schedule which amounted to 3000 yards/meters of swimming. Holy crap you guys really get to it huh? Well, I doubted I would actually finish the work out and was bummed that there was no coach (isn't that what I'm paying for), but I finished the workout and didn't feel like a total swimming moron. Yeah me!

Well, my alarm was set for the correct time this a.m. I'm astonished at how much that extra 30 mins changes my attitude. I was NOT feeling it this a.m. I got up had my coffee and rushed off... as I'm headed to the pool I'm thinking ... 'why am I doing this?" It's SEPT the END of the tri season this is insane". I didn't have any of these types of thoughts when I was going to the pool at 8pm. Anyway. I showed up talked to the coach.. mostly just to tell her I was new and say hi. Here we go w/ another 3000 meters (Side note: I went to a swim clinic the evening before and did some swimming.. maybe 1200 - 1500 yards.

I think I have unreasonable expectations of Masters programs. I'm always very underwhelmed. I expected that the coach might talk to me a bit about my swimming before I got in the water since I was new. Things like.. what kind of experience do I have (I could have sunk like a rock for all she knew), why I was there so forth and so on. I mean obviously I'm there to swim, but I'm no masters swimmer.. I'm a triathlete.. this may have been good info for her to have. Though I think she figured it out when I balked at the butterfly! Or when I swam w/o kicking... :D

I got no direction on my freestyle.. and that's not bc my stroke is so great. I did get some feedback on the breast stroke and back stroke. Awesome I'm sure that'll come in handy on race day. Anyway....

I have to work REALLY hard to keep my negative self talk at bay when I'm in the water...well I got lapped like crazy this a.m. and tried not to take it personally.. then one of the ladies that was swimming in our lane moved over .. to a more crowded 'fast' lane. I guess the benefit of being slow is that we had only 3 people in our 'slow' lane while the fast lane had like 6 people crammed into it. Whatever.

As I'm trucking along in the slow lane trying really hard to stay positive and focus on all the things I learned about MY stroke yesterday in our swim clinic I started thinking about the evolution of my running. I spent MANY years at the same speed and only recently feel like I've really kicked it up a notch and seen improvements in my speed so I'm trying to go easy on myself in the pool. I'm a neophyte in the pool. Let's get our stroke down and then worry more about the speed!

I'm also thinking I might try to figure out how to do Tuesday night and Sunday afternoon instead ... the early a.m. stuff is ROUGH!!! and no good for my attitude and continuation of the program. And then again maybe I'll just get used to it. I did like having it done!