Is your body saying no… or your brain? I had a moment getting into the pool where my mind was singing me a little song about how ridiculous this was because I ran 9 miles yesterday and I should not be expected to do more than a few laps of freestyle and then some nice easy backstroke.
But I figured out it was my mind talking to me, not my body. My body was fine. My body was like, ooh, freestyle! pull the water, pull the water….gentle kicks, flop flop flop… It was my mind that was freaking out.
My mind was panicked because it knew I was planning to swim as many laps of freestyle as possible today. And when I swim freestyle, I feel like I can’t breathe. I start out ok, and gradually become more and more oxygen depleted as I cross the pool, until I feel as though I’m drowning by the time I’m 3/4 of the way there.
Mental? Physical? Technique? Probably a combination of all three.
But if I want to swim this race, I’ve got to swim through it. So I’m going to have to freestyle over and over again until I get the hang of it.
I’m doing it one lap at a time right now, because I know I can make it one lap. I get overly panicked trying to do 50 meters or 75 of freestyle without resting, so today I did more 25s. Over. And Over.
Today’s swim: 14 repeats of (one length freestyle, one length backstroke recovery, 20 second rest). That’s 14 lengths of freestyle – over halfway there! I just need to start transitioning those recovery laps from backstroke into freestyle and delete the need for recovery time in between. It reminds me of Couch to 5k, where I worked on my walk/run increments until they finally became continuous running.
New goal: I’m never leaving the pool without having completed at least 24 pool lengths of swimming. That’s down and then back a minimum of 12 times, and it’s the length of my race in July. My instructor had me do 15 continuous lengths of backstroke during our last lesson to work on adding distance, and it made me realize I can do more than I think. Backstroke is a nice way for me to add some distance because I can breathe the entire time, which is my mental struggle with freestyle, but it still works my legs and arms which will translate some to freestyle.
Next step will be another lesson Wednesday to keep working on technique, and then it’s back to adding distance, reducing recovery, and breathing… breathing… breathing.
I can do this; I will do this.
Just keep swimming… just keep swimming…
PS – I also got awesome new goggled designed to be sturdy enough for open water swimming… they don’t leak. It’s fantastic.
