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.
Yeah! Welcome to the BEST TRIATHLON SPORT! :)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, 2250 yards for your first swim is ridiculous. At this rate you'll be at Ironman distance by... next week? Don't forget that you'll also have a floatation device (aka wetsuit) in the open water!
As indicated by the extreme soreness in my shoulders today, 2250 yards was probably a bit too ambitious for my first swim :P. Already looking forward to the next one, though!
DeleteHold the phone.. 2250 ?!?! That is like 2x longer than I have ever swam. I feel like you were holding out on us Chen! Turns out you are amazing at all THREE sports?!
ReplyDeleteNegatory on the 'amazing'... it wasn't all continuous, and you forget about the level of panic I endured :)
DeleteNice one!! 2250 is a pretty serious swim. I somehow was convinced to do an open water swim once. Word of advice: don't try to talk the lifeguard into giving you their surfboards, it's a waste of breath.
ReplyDeletePS that was me (Kristen)
DeleteHahaha I won't ask first - I'll just lunge for the boards and see how they react.
Delete