Oh my goodness, friends, that was a rough rough finals week at the end of a rough rough semester. But the semester is over, and the women's retreat is over (it was lovely), and I am grateful. Now I am turning my attention to the rather alarming fact that an optimistic winter version of me signed us up for a triathlon. It takes place a month from Thursday, and I am SO not ready.
I'm not worried about the bike/run components. It's a sprint triathlon, and I know that I can (barring injury or acts of God) bike 20km and run 5km without being last or puking. The swim is another story. I'm not a good swimmer.
Another day I might tell you the story of how I got to be a bad swimmer (condensed version: learned late, too nearsighted to feel confident in the water, and then a sort of swimmer's Matthew Effect kicked in and I forgot the things I used to know). I reached adulthood able to swim on my back and do a little-old-lady head-out-of-water breaststroke, but I could not -- I mean I just could not -- sequence breathing and stroke.
So. Slowly, miserably, I taught myself how to breaststroke like a middle-aged lady instead of a little old lady. Over time it stopped being miserable and became -- who knew? -- comfortable. I could breaststroke forever -- except that I was breaststroking at the speed of a glacier with its brakes on.
Even more slowly and miserably, I have been teaching myself freestyle. I went to one adult swim lesson, where they told me to stop lifting my head up. This advice allowed me to take a few breaths without an attack of panic-flailing, but three breaths will not actually get a person through a triathlon swim course. P-a-i-n-s-t-a-k-i-n-g-l-y, I have been nibbling away at my resistance. The first time I swam a length of freestyle -- now that I am in the middle of this sentence I do not want to finish it, to tell you how distressed I was at the end. I gave myself permission to swim bits and pieces of freestyle lengths, and slowly I've been stitching them together. I suppose it is progress that I can swim a length of freestyle without panic or flailing.
A length of freestyle will not get a person through a triathlon swim course either.
I swam on Sunday and felt thoroughly discouraged afterward. I headed to the hot tub to settle myself down and plopped in across from this hulking guy with an Ironman tattoo. "When did you finish your Ironman?" I asked him. "The first one?" he said. "About 15 years ago."
He told me that he started from zero as a swimmer -- that he had to learn as an adult, and then 18 months later he finished his first Ironman. (That's a 2.4-mile swim. Two-point-four miles.) He said the key is to stay out of your own way -- to choose to disregard the voice in your head that says "I can't I can't I can't I can't."
That voice is very loud in my own particular head.
This afternoon, once my grades were submitted and my email inbox was emptied, I watched a video on breaststroke technique. I went to the pool and tried out some of the things it showed me, and I swam my half-mile 20% faster than the last time. This is still really slow, but it feels like progress. It occurred to me in the water that my cute little swim skirt is creating drag, and I should probably suck it up and get something different. I kept going, pounding away at the freestyle fear. I still kind of hate it, but I definitely hate it less than I did last week.
I'm feeling a little shy about posting this, but I'm throwing it up there anyway. If you have resources to recommend (Bearing? Swimmermom?) I'm all ears.
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