The Emotional Road to IM is as Hilly as the Bike Course

So, I did not want to swim tonight and I did not want to bike. Repeat. You could not make me, Sam I Am.

But I made myself go.

Since when do I say, "I had to cut my swim short; I only got in 2,000 meters?" Since today, 7/15/08.

I had a good time at the pool, actually. When I arrived, a water aerobics class was still going on, so I needed to wait about 10 minutes. I fooled around warming up in the "open swim" section of the pool, trying out my sculling and rotation drills. I enjoyed listening to the music for the aerobics class, and, at some point, asked the lone kid in the pool if he wanted me to throw rebounds to him from the basketball hoop set up in the shallow end of the pool. That was a blast---and it totally relaxed me for the swim, when it started.

Given all the dramarama around the swim lately, I decided to go back to Swim Coach's last written pool workout for me, instead of a long continuous swim, and instead of my Tri Coach's swim assignments, which I find undoable still. I got through about 2,000 meters of the Swim Coach's drills it before it was time to get on the (stationary) bike so I could get in an hour before the Y closed.

I experimented tonight with a new way of breathing---exhaling only through the nose...which actually seemed to work well. Of course, the evening's festivities were not without their usual dose of humility...I was cruising along, from my perspective, when I was joined in my lane by a woman who did a slow, graceful, breast stroke...and totally lapped me w/my freestyle pull. Just when I was congratulating myself that, for the first time ever, I was not being lapped by the free-stylin' guy in the lane next to me, the universe sends me this effortlessly smokin' breast stroker. Confidence is short-lived, young tri-athlete! Training is this perpetual roller coaster, it seems...not just one long uphill climb. Again and again, I learn to stay in my own race from all of these teachers of mine.

Tomorrow, I'm going to wear my wetsuit in the salt water pool at a local gym to see if the Weird Symptoms come on that way...variable by variable, I'll try to figure out the root cause of that particular form of suffering....and eliminate it.

I only swam 2,000 meters today.