Ironman, Step 2: Completing my first lap swim in 6 years

Posted by Chen

First I don’t post in nearly a month, and now look – a flurry of activity! Today, I took my next major step towards potentially doing this whole triathlon thing.  That’s right, folks – after weeks of talking about it but flat out avoiding it, I finally got myself into the water. With the weather being as hot as it has been all week (90-plus degrees, for those of you not in the Bay Area), today seemed like a good day to not slog through another run and to try my hand at sport #3 instead.

Before I get into today’s swim, I should mention that the last time I swam laps was back in 2008 when I seriously injured my hip flexor and couldn’t run for 3 weeks while it healed. At the time, I was still a grad student at UCSB, and I had access to a pretty amazing outdoor pool. I remember getting pretty into doing laps during that time, but my hip flexors inevitably healed, and I quickly got back into running, leaving swimming far behind.

Fast forward to today. I’ve been a member at my gym for nearly four and a half years now, but I hadn’t ever been up to the lovely rooftop 25-yard pool until this afternoon. I was happy to see that there was a full lane open when I arrived (there are only 3 lanes as you can see in the picture below, so sharing is apparently common, as told to me by another member who was up there doing laps as well). Swimming in a straight line is not my forte (I know, it shouldn’t be that hard; I can’t really explain it), so I was glad that I could meander about as I wished while re-figuring this sport out.

It’s somewhat ridiculous that I never used this pool until today

Many random thoughts swam (ha) through my head during this workout, so I’ll break them up by laps (where 1 lap = out and back, or 50 yards), because organization is the key to life.

Lap 1: I think I was a bit too eager when I started and ended up really out of breath by the end of this lap. My new goggles also weren’t keeping water out as well as I would have liked (probably due to user error), and I had TOTALLY forgotten what it feels like to have water going up my nose/ears/every other orifice the whole time. I had to stop, stand up, and regroup, all the while thinking to myself “Holy $@^&*! That was only ONE lap! There’s no f-ing WAY I’m doing a triathlon in OPEN WATER, are you kidding??”

Luckily, I managed to calm myself down and told myself to just keep it easy and try again.

Laps 2-15: I decided to breathe every other stroke rather than every three as I had been doing in the first lap, which definitely kept me calmer during my freestyle laps. I also decided to alternate freestyle with breaststroke every lap, as breaststroke is far easier for me mentally right now. I know that I’ll eventually want to swim entirely using freestyle, but for my first day, this would have to do. During these initial laps, I kept thinking about how so many people are around you in a tri, kicking you in the face and swimming over you if they have to. Every time these thoughts raced through my head, I would temporarily get really nervous and start to panic. To cope, I would turn my attention to saying the lap number over and over so I wouldn’t forget where I was. Side note: who knew counting could be so hard??? This seemed to work, so I kept at it.

Laps 16-30: I started to get into the groove, and while my freestyle laps still felt far more panicky than my breaststroke ones, my overall panic level was slowly subsiding. At this point, I saw someone get into the far lane and noticed that he was, like, twice to three times as fast as the other two of us in the pool. I was impressed. However, I will never aim for speed in the water. I will aim for breathing and life.

Laps 31-45: At this point, I was getting even more comfortable and decided to try my hand at breathing every three strokes for my freestyle laps again. I generally did OK, but what I think I realized is that I swim so slowly at the moment that three strokes is a really long time, and I inevitably kept running out of air while my face was under water. So I would take a big gasp during my breathing strokes and then repeat the whole cycle again. I think I like alternating my breathing sides, though, and it also helps me swim in a straight line, so I’m going to keep working at it.

I finally got out of the pool (I have no idea how long 45 laps took me since I didn’t look at the clock, but I can assure you my pace was stupid slow), and as I was drying off, a sweet lady in the lane over gave me a thumbs up and said, “Good job! You’re a really good swimmer!” I certainly don’t believe her words to be true, but at this point, I’ll take any confidence booster I can get.

All in all, despite my many moments of panic and dread, 2250 yards wasn’t bad for my first day. I definitely need to schedule a lesson with Rachel at some point so that she can tell me how terrible my form is, but it’s nice to know I can still keep myself afloat.

That said, today reminded me that I will DEFINITELY need to practice open water swimming like a thousand times before my first triathlon. Swimming is no joke. If you get tired while biking, you can take a break by coasting down some hills. If you get tired while running, you can take a break by walking for a bit. But swimming? If you get tired while swimming and try to take a break, YOU DIE. I guess that’s a good reason to start incorporating this sport into my weekly workouts, stat. Yeah. I gotta go make a training plan now.