A Little Swim Break Through

• 1 • Swim

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After some initially panicked breathing in the water during the warm up, I settled in today and ended with a 100 yard time trial where I didn’t stop once. That’s the first time I’ve accomplished that distance without a break. And at the end of an hour swim session, too. I’m proud of that.

I also did quite a few 50s today. It used to be that every 50 was me swimming reasonably well for the first 25, and then panicking and flailing my way back across the pool for the second 25. But I’ve improved… the second half of each fifty still isn’t as good as the first half, but they’re less terrible. 50 is becoming the new 25. I can feel it.

My swim instructor Brittany,, is amazing at picking apart my technique and making one little tweak at a time to improve my swimming. She’ll find something, have me work on it with guidance and feedback 25 yards at a time, and then make sure I do some additional laps to try to add that new tweak to muscle memory. Incrementally, things get better and better.

Today’s tweak was not rotating quite so much to the side, and I think it made a big difference with my endurance and ease of swimming. Watching the videos I could barely notice a difference, but swimming it felt much different. Easier. Better.

Here’s to guided practice! There’s nothing like knowing exactly what to work on to get better, and the confidence that you’re doing it right. I feel really lucky to be able to swim with a coach.

Tomorrow morning’s 2017 New Year New Class is Firestarter… wish me luck!

 

Swim, Blood Donation & Picking My First Class

• 5 • NYR 2017, Swim

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Here’s a photo of me swimming yesterday.

I’m at the point where the quick technique fixes and rapid improvements are diminishing, and now the progress I see is much more gradual. I’m struggling with keeping my kick consistent and not scissor kicking when I take a breath, keeping my arm stretched forward while I take a breath and not letting it dip or bend, and keeping my temple down in the water when I breathe with the left arm forward.

My personal trainer (coach? swim instructor?) is going to start dividing our hour sessions into drills for the beginning and then working on increasing distance for the second part.

Yesterday’s swim workout:

50 yards swimming

4 x 25 yards side kicking drill

100 yards pull buoy

4 x 25 yards armless swimming drill

6 x 50 yards swim

75 yards swim

That’s a total of 725 yards. Tri For a Cure’s swim course is a third of a mile: 587 yards. So if this is average for a session, I’m swimming longer than the course distance every Tuesday and Thursday. 🙂

(For experienced swimmers, I realize that’s not very many yards in an hour, but realize there’s a lot of instruction and procrastinating and heavy breathing mixed in there slowing me down between pool lengths.)

I feel discouraged by the way my form falls apart at the end of 50 yards. I feel encouraged that I’m doing 50 yards at a time instead of stopping every 25, because that’s progress. It’s slow, but it’s progress. And I can taste a breakthrough around the corner. I thought it would be salty but it tastes a little like bromine.

Donated Blood Today

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Today is warmer than it has been in weeks and I have a strong urge to go running…. but I had scheduled a blood donation so I donated blood instead. I guess doing both isn’t advisable. Especially since I plan to replace that blood with beer later. It’s a retox ritual I like to do every so often to compensate for all the leafy greens I enjoy.

Here I am in my war paint in front of a Donor Parking sign. I joked on Instagram that I always wear extra blush to blood donation appointments because then they don’t tell me I look too pale and advise me to sit there longer in recovery. I am always pale. I have things to do. (Yes, I blended the blush before I went in.)

I’m not a fan of needles. I love remembering the time that I left my doctor’s office out the back door rather than stop at the lab as directed to get my blood drawn for a cholesterol check. Since I started donating blood I’ve had enough exposure to become desensitized to the fear and wouldn’t classify myself as afraid anymore. It took knowing I might save a life to take a deep breath and voluntarily donate, but now it’s seriously not a big deal.

So many things in life are like that. You can find out more and schedule your next donation at redcross.org.

I have picked my first new class to take at the Equinox!

(Read about my goal to try every class my gym offers here.)

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Oh yeah. That’s right. It’s called FIRESTARTER.

Which is pretty much the exact opposite of how I would describe my fitness personality. I’m kind of a “smoldering and could possibly be out but can’t quite tell for sure” fitness type if we’re talking flames.

But get this – it’s a new class, and they’re promoting it by offering you a free Sweetgreen salad if you take the class in the next few weeks.

Um, yes. Please. I would like to start a fire and then eat some kale while I blog about it. (Guys, I think the fire might be in your muscles. I am a little afraid. But they have burned before.)

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I’m taking it Friday morning. Wish me luck!

And let me know if you try a new group fitness class! Paul, we’re particularly interested in hearing how much you like Zumba.

-Kelly

Tri For a Cure 2017 and New Year’s Resolutions

• 0 • Swim

I’ve registered for Tri For a Cure 2017! I raised enough money last year to be guaranteed entry and knew even as I was completing the event last July that I wanted to do it one more time.

Then I lost my grandfather to cancer in November.

Now it feels more important and personal than ever.

I have a photo of him on my fundraising page.  Your donations would be so appreciated. It’s going to be harder to host a CycleGiving party to raise money to fight cancer and be upbeat and cheerful and pass out beers after. It’s harder when I miss a goal during a workout and think of him and feeling like I’ve failed somehow.

I need to focus on the fact that he was a cancer survivor for over a decade, and that’s what I’m celebrating. That’s what I’m working towards. That’s why I am doing Tri For a Cure again to raise money. For the decade he was with us, and the cancer research and prevention that MCF funds to help other people have extra decades. That IS something to celebrate.

So I’m Going to Just Keep Swimming

And I am getting better. I still panic in the water. It’s still a stretch for me to do 50 yards without breathing. But I can tell it’s mental and not physical. So I’ll keep eating away at the panic. Improving form. Getting better at breathing without losing technique and sinking. It’ll click. Sometime between now and July, it’ll click.

New Year’s Resolutions

I said I was going to mull them over with champagne and pick some.  I’m still indecisive. I want to do them all.

I want to have meals planned and groceries purchased every Friday afternoon so we can have a more relaxed weekend as a family.

I want to try every class my gym offers at least once.

I’d like to have homemade granola bars or muffins in the freezer at all times for school snack options.

I’m thinking about taking up running. (I haven’t run since vacation in Dana Point that first week of December…. just keep swimming? And cycling? No?)

I want to get back into my meditation practice.

I want to be cleaned up from breakfast before lunch. Every day. EVERY day. WHY IS THIS SO HARD?!

These are all variations on things I already do… so maybe it’s not so crazy to attempt them all. After all, last year I learned to swim and clip into a road bike and completed my first two triathlons. THAT is crazy. Homemade granola bars are a snap compared to that.

Anyone come up with a resolution they’re really excited about? I’d love to hear about it.

Swim drill video

• 0 • Swim, Triathlon

Did more swimming today.

I counted up the hash marks on my “No Days Off” calendar from Tracksmith, and I’ve actually done more swim workouts than runs this year! This makes sense when you remember that I went from never having done the crawl or backstroke to completing my first two open water sprint triathlons this summer. Serious time investment was needed to make sure I could even compete safely!

I’m very optimistic about the swim portion of Tri For a Cure this July. I’m making a lot of process on technique.

Here’s a video of a swim drill my trainer had me doing this morning. I’m working on breathing by just turning my head, not letting my forward arm sink, and keeping my shoulders stacked and not rotating. You can see that I’ve made much more progress on one side than the other. When I’m facing the wall, my forward hand drops, I pull my head up and out of the water to breathe, and my kick widens a lot. It’s better (though not perfect) on the side where I’m facing the buoys.

Swimming is fun because with each drill there’s something specific to focus on, so it’s always interesting. When I go on my own, I will do 10 minutes where I’m focusing on kicking, 10 minutes where I’m really trying to turn my head to breathe keeping it low to the water, 10 minutes on keeping my arms straight and my hips stacked, and so on. It’s methodical as we work on each piece of muscle memory to tie everything together and tackle one aspect of swimming at a time.

So maybe there’s a little more to it than “just keep swimming”. And that’s what makes it so fun.

Swim lesson Tuesday

• 0 • Cross training, Swim

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This is a clip from a video my swim instructor took today. She usually takes a couple videos during each hour-long session, and I find it incredibly helpful to see how my swimming is progressing. It’s easy to see in different videos what I was focusing on, and when a skill we’ve been working on sets in a little and continues to be correct even when my focus is elsewhere.

In this picture, I’m working hard on keeping my arm elongated forward during each side of the turn so I have a good glide on each side. See how straight I am, and how stacked my hips are? This is a big improvement from even a few weeks ago. Today she told me that she’s excited about my progress and it helps that I’m really motivated. It felt great to hear myself described as motivated 🙂 I try so hard to listen carefully and put all my energy into following each instruction so I’m not wasting my time with her. I practice once a week on my own too, for the same reason. It’s so rewarding to have the effort noticed!

I still feel exhausted and out of breath after swimming a length of the pool, but Brittany (my instructor) assures me that with correct form and enough practice I’ll get through that.

Swimming the day after a long-run

I was a little worried that my schedule meant I had an hour long swim lesson the day after a long run, but it ended up being all right. I was a little tired at the end, but I’m always tired at the end. Swimming is hard.

It’s so fun to improve and to see the difference when I look at the videos taken week-to-week.

I feel really grateful to have access to a great pool and instructor so I can learn a new skill. It felt like a real splurge to buy swim lessons for a grown-up, but I truly love it. Swimming complements running so well, I find it pretty easy to run the day before or after.

Swimming complements running so well, I find it pretty easy to run the day before or after. I’m hoping that this will be a life-long pleasure that I’m investing in up-front.

Time to haul a scooter off to preschool for pick-up… don’t tell my legs, though. They think I’m driving.