How I Learned to Swim (and didn’t drown)

August 9, 2012 by 7 Comments

I’ve had several discussions lately with people who are beginning the fun journey of learning to swim as adults. If you are one of them, let me tell you right now that I know exactly what you’re going through. Four years ago, I was you (sort of..well, you know what I mean…)

I hate not being able to do something. Of course, there are lots of things I won’t be able to do no matter how much I try, such as reach the top shelf at the grocery store without climbing on the bottom shelf, become President (I’m London born and proud of it) or pee like a guy, but when I know I CAN do something about it, that pisses me off.

Plus, I really wanted to do a triathlon but not being able to swim was a bit of a sticking point. So I decided I would learn. Here’s my no holds barred account of how I did just that.

Four years ago my two boys were 4 and 6 and were both on the Mini Ray swim team. In other words, they could swim better than I could. So I made sure to sit really close to their coach during practice, so I could hear what she was telling them. Then, when it got dark (not kidding) I went to the pool and tried to swim. I was terrified the lifeguard would dive in and try to rescue me during my pathetic attempts to get across the pool, but thankfully our lifeguards don’t really like getting out of their chairs so I was left alone to flounder in the deep end.

At 8 he could swim better than me...

When summer came to an end, I moved to the indoor pool near my youngest son’s preschool. I’d drop him at school and, before I could change my mind, I’d drive over to the Freedom Center pool and get in the lane next to the wall (for safety). At that time in the morning it was just me and the water aerobics class, so I got to swim along to some great tunes. At this point I could make it one length without stopping, but I had to rest at the wall each time. I couldn’t believe how out of breath I was. Here I was, a marathon runner, and I couldn’t swim 25 yards without hyperventilating. I learned that part of this was my poor breathing technique, but most of it was my discomfort in the water. I was terrified I might drown. Seriously. I had visions of slipping under the water and no-one noticing.  I eventually overcame this fear simply by swimming more, and found I could do 2 then 3 and more lengths without stopping.

That's what I said...

In the Spring, I signed up for South Riding Triathlon, which would be held in September. I attended a tri clinic at the beginning of the summer and was horrified that we had to swim the entire 400m race distance. I managed it with some stopping and about 100m of breaststroke. After some biking and running, which I did with no problems, the race director, Brian Crow, told us to do the swim again. Then he looked at me and said, “freestyle the whole way.” Who was this guy kidding? There was NO WAY I could swim 400m freestyle! Nevertheless, I got in the pool and I tried it. I had to stop a couple of times but I made it the whole way swimming freestyle. I was psyched.

I had signed up to swim twice a week with the master’s swim program over the summer. I got through the workouts and improved my stamina while lowering the time I spent hanging on the wall, but my technique was awful. Master’s swim really doesn’t focus on technique, since it’s assumed you already know how to swim (most of my poolmates swam in high school while I played field hockey and ran cross-country and kept away from bodies of water) and just want to get in a workout.

In the Fall I signed up to swim with Brian Crow from Team TPR. I knew I wasn’t a good swimmer, but I didn’t realize how bad I was until one day when I accidentally found myself in a lane with two of the faster ladies in our Wednesday morning swim group. I seriously thought they were going to drown me as they kept passing me, doing flip turns, and other scary stuff. To make matters worse, Coach Crow was videotaping us so I got to relive the horror of my underwater slaughter as well as observe my horrific technique over and over again.

But, as the months passed and Coach Crow picked apart my stroke week after week, having me do all these totally weird drills that made me feel like a complete idiot, I saw some improvement. There were moments, such as when he had me swim catchup with a pull bouy, and I couldn’t stop myself from logrolling, when I thought I would never get this. There were even a couple of primadonna scenes where I got out of the pool and stomped off, but things eventually got better.

Last summer my then 9 year old taught me how to do a flip turn. If you think learning to swim is embarrassing, try learning to flip with your 9 year old saying, “OMG Mom, it’s soooo easy!!!”

I made it!

Last year I completed my first Half Ironman, which involves 1.2 miles of swimming. In open water. To make matters worse, I positioned myself front and center at the start and got pummeled for the first few minutes. I focused on not panicking, reminding myself that I was NOT going to drown, and just kept swimming…

So when people who are at the beginning of their swim journey tell me that they don’t think they’ll ever be able to swim 400m without stopping, that they’ll never feel completely comfortable swimming, that they will NEVER swim in open water, I explain where I started, and how far I’ve come, and tell them YES, you will.

 

 

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Ironman Austin 70.3 Part IV – Scarier than JAWS

October 30, 2011 by 2 Comments

Swim Goal: 40 mins; Actual: 40:46

Calm before the storm...

We all make mistakes in races. Most are small. Sometimes – not often – we make mistakes that severely affect or even end our race. But identifying mistakes is a necessary part of the learning process and, I believe, essential to becoming a better racer. Of course, that’s assuming we learn from them. Sometimes it’s hard to admit that you made a mistake, but it’s better to do that than to put a bad race down to bad luck. Blaming the weather or the course doesn’t make sense…the conditions are the same for everyone.

And if you think that only rookies make mistakes, think again. My teammate Wayne, an experienced triathlete, admitted to putting his left shoe on the right pedal and vice versa at one of his recent races. You can be assured he learned from that one and double-checked his shoes the next time!

What was my mistake at Austin? You guess. Here’s a picture of my teammate Marisa just before we entered the water. I am standing next to her.

Marisa in between the Wolfanger shirts

And here we are in the water, somewhere near the front, with 175 people behind us:

Considering that I’m a midpack swimmer, and came out of the swim 43rd in my age group, standing at the front of a swim wave of 200 women was an aggressive astonishingly dumb move. And not just at the front, but center, too. This was not a conscious decision. I – and my two teammates, apparently – just wasn’t thinking. When we got in the water for the start there was just one row in front of us. And because we were in the center, when the gun went off, we got slammed from swimmers on both sides and behind. I couldn’t move right or left, just forward. I was pushed completely under the water, hit in the head, back, feet, everywhere. I swallowed a gallon of water and almost panicked. I had to talk to myself to get through it. It was the scariest open water start I’ve ever been in, and ever want to be in. Someone hit my heel so hard it hurt for half the 1.2 mile swim.

After the first bouy things started to calm down. I moved to the right to stay clear of the fray, and took the two turns wide, which I don’t think hurt my time as I was able to swim freely, while closer to the bouy it was a washing machine frenzy. My swim actually started to feel good and I was able to forget the horrific start. The swim was a triangle, and on the last leg I started thinking, “Why am I hungry?” Then I realized the pain in my stomach wasn’t hunger, but a cramp.

I swam through a bit of hydrilla close to shore but kept swimming until I hit sand and then stood up and started running up the hill. I had heard there would be wetsuit strippers and, as I started pulling my suit off I saw an available stripper and signaled to her. She told me to sit down and then she just yanked my suit off in a second. It was totally awesome and I recommend having a stripper remove your suit if they have them at your next race. Much easier than trying to do it yourself, especially if you’re like me and don’t practice often ever.

Out of the water...prior to getting stripped

So I survived the swim, and actually met my time goal. The start wasn’t pretty, but I felt good for most of it. Little did I know how a mistake I made at the start of the race was going to come back to haunt me later on…

 

 

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Time to Extract Butt from Couch…

March 26, 2011 by 1 Comment

Let’s take a look at the schedule for tomorrow: 15 mile run. Whaaaaa? But I just ran a marathon! Oh, that’s right….it was a training run. And I’m still training. For a 50K. Well, at least I’m well rested.

Tuesday my coach texted me to remind me where we were meeting for strength training. “Not coming,” I replied. “Moving will make you feel better,” was the response. Considering that I had just walked my kids to school on legs that still didn’t want to bend and had progressed from backwards to sideways staircase descending, I thought I was doing pretty darn well. But lift weights? No, not gonna happen. Heck, I was still having to hold onto the toilet seat to get on and off that. No way I was planning on doing any squats or lunges.

“I am moving but thanks for the advice because I was going to sit on the couch all week and eat chocolate,” I texted back. I have to admit, I have been sitting on the couch, and I have eaten a lot of cookies this week. And I’ve had ice cream twice! Yes, I am treating myself a little after all that deprivation and excessive lentil-consumption.  

Anyway, it’s not as if I spent the whole week on the couch, for goodness-sake! I swam 3000m on Wednesday, although I had absolutely no zip. I found a little speed at the very end of the last speed set, but I think that was mostly because I really needed to pee. Thursday I rode on the trainer for 30 minutes and totally sucked wind the entire time. I felt like I was riding someone else’s bike. Everything felt odd and uncomfortable and my cadence was somewhere in the 70s. I have a duathlon in a couple of weeks and this ride felt so bad I started thinking about bagging it.

Friday I went to my usual Power Yoga class with a slight twinge of dread. This is a hard class on a good day. Was I gonna make it? Or would I crumple in a withering heap while attempting bound triangle? I’ve seen it happen. Actually, I think I did pretty well. My quads seem to have recovered and, since I haven’t really done much all week, everything else feels pretty good! No shaky arms after the 50th chaturanga, no faltering through crow, to tripod, to headstand. I did it all!

Then I went to Five Guys and had a cheeseburger and fries. After all, I’m running 15 miles tomorrow. :)

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How to Turn a Turtle into a Fish

March 8, 2011 by 12 Comments

Three years ago I couldn’t swim. Unless you count swimming like a turtle, with your head held out of the water, actual swimming. I decided if I was ever going to attempt a triathlon I was not going to turtle swim, so I figured I’d better learn how to swim with my head in the water.

So…did I hire a coach? No, of course I didn’t. I was much too embarrassed to do that. What I did was watch and listen to my 6 year old’s swim coach, and then, under cover of darkness, when (I hoped) no-one was watching, I went to the pool and practiced swimming with my face in the water. I got the hang of it pretty quickly and, while I later learned that my stroke was horrific and I had no reach, rotation, or pull to speak of, I actually mastered the breathing part pretty quickly. Which was good for me because that actually terrified me more than anything.

Of course, swimming more than one 25-meter length without stopping was another matter. That seemed impossible. My terrible form, coupled with a fear of drowning that caused me to hyperventilate, resulted in my needing to “get my breath back” after each length. Thankfully, shortly after embarking on my swimming adventure I took a vacation to Cornwall, in Southwest England, with my sister. There I got to practice my swimming in a 10 meter indoor pool, which was perfect as I could rest every few strokes. (I was also chased by a cow during a run, but that’s another story…)

I kept up my “swimming” over the winter at The Freedom Center in Manassas. The pool at this facility is particularly nice, and the lifeguards had probably never seen anyone quite as pathetic as yours truly. I was sure one of them was going to jump in and “rescue” me at any point. I would swim for 30 minutes, once a week. Each time I went I willed myself to swim one more length without stopping, until I could manage about 6 at a time. I could also keep going longer if I switched from freestyle to breaststroke. Just to clarify, my breaststroke was no slower than my freestyle….

By that point I had signed up for the South Riding Triathlon, and in June 2009 I attended a triathlon clinic to learn how to transition from swim to bike. When I signed up I thought we were just going to do part of the swim but, when I got there, I realized I had to swim the entire 400m – all at once! I did my usual freestyle-to-breaststroke switcheroo to get through the swim, but on the second go-around the coach said I’d have to swim it all freestyle. I can’t remember if I actually managed it, I was so freaked out!

So I joined the Master’s Swim program. That was painful. I was the youngest and fittest in our group of 4 ladies, but I was the slowest swimmer. I got through each one-hour workout using sheer determination and stubborn will, and by the time the triathlon rolled around in September, I was actually able to swim 400m, freestyle, without stopping. I think it took me about nine minutes.

Shortly after completing South Riding Triathlon I joined Tri Performance. I have been swimming twice a week with the team ever since. There have been good days and bad days. There have been days when I have thought I will never, ever, get the technique right. There was one day last summer, during which I had some of my worst swims ever, when my coach picked apart every part of my stroke and I did my best primadonna impression by jumping out of the pool and stomping off. And there have been some great days, usually when I realize that I love swimming and give it that little extra effort.

Today is exactly 18 months since my first triathlon. I have just returned from a 1 hr, 3000m workout. I swam a 300m in 5 minutes. (Thanks for the push, Jack!) While swimming is still my weakest event in triathlon and I still can’t do a flip turn, I have come a long way since those days in the 10 meter pool.

And that’s how you turn a turtle into a fish.

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