Freestyle

I grew up with swimming pools.

This was a hotel pool, but so what. Aaron and I loved hotel pools as much
as we loved our pool at home.

This was our backyard pool in Folsom. We spent
a lot of hot California summers in this pool.

I had swimming lessons as a kid, but never serious ones--mostly just the ones at the local community pool that helped me learn how to float, paddle, kick, and play safely in a pool. Most of what I can do in a pool now (which isn't much) comes from years and years of spending most of my summer vacations playing in the pool with my brother and our friends.

In other words, I'm quite proficient in not drowning. Could probably still do an underwater handstand, too.

I enjoy swimming--it's a nearly perfect exercise. My heart rate goes up, my muscles work hard, and yet there is no impact whatsoever on my joints and I don't get sweaty. Best of all possible worlds, right? And until recently, when I got a bee in my bonnet had a bee put in my bonnet by M. the Reasonable to be a triathlete, I've been content to spend my swimming time at the gym doing my own slow version of a breast stroke, with my head above water and a cute little frog kick. Keeping my head above water meant not having major chlorine smell in my hair, and not worrying about my contact lenses, which I'm not supposed to submerge.

I had a pair of goggles, but they stayed buried in a drawer with the rest of my workout gear...until this week.

If I'm going to tell people I'm training for a triathlon, I need to start swimming like a triathlete. So on Monday, I headed to the gym, goggles tucked in my bag with my swimsuit and towel, intent on doing my best to swim freestyle.

(Said to M. the Reasonable today: "It's kind of kicking my butt." He grinned. Bastard.)

And it is. After warming up with eight laps of breast stroke, I managed four laps--100 meters--on Monday before fatigue (to be fair, I'd also run that morning and done a full strength training workout) drove me back to the locker room.

On Tuesday, I went back. I managed six laps of freestyle this time (and about six of breast stroke). I kept my contacts in and found that my goggles do a very good job of keeping the water out.

Today, after a two-and-a-half-mile run, it was back to the gym. My goal was to skip the breast stroke entirely and do eight laps of freestyle. I managed to push out ten. That's 250 meters down, 250 to go if I'm going to do a triathlon next year.

I can do it.

The trick is to start as I have--doing what I can do, and adding more each day. Just a little. I probably won't swim tomorrow, but next time I get in the pool, the expectation that I can complete ten laps is there. Maybe I can then push it to twelve, or I can start doing laps without stopping at the end of each one, improving my overall time. I'm sort of blindly self-coaching myself, listening to my body and figuring things out as I go.

Eventually, I want to talk to someone who knows what they're doing about my form. I know I'm kicking pretty well--I don't splash too much. My arms are doing pretty well. Breathing is hard and sometimes I stop, gasping, in the middle of the pool to readjust. And if I'm going to actually race, I supposed I'd better get faster, and used to the idea of swimming in something far more scary and sinister than a pool (I'm not crazy about swimming in bodies of water where I can't see the bottom).

Do I have my work cut out for me? Yes, yes I do.

I said to M. the Reasonable last week, "I'm so doing this."

He knows me well enough to know that I will follow through. He simply smiled. "I know you are."

And so I am.