Fish outta water…in water

My 8 week training for the corporate triathlon starts on Monday. I haven’t done any swimming since I completed the corporate triathlon in 2014. Which is a real shame because I had worked really hard to ‘learn’ to swim. It wasn’t that I couldn’t swim, I was just a weak swimmer. I had been that kid that was too scared to put their face in the water. And after 10 weeks of swimming lessons last year I had made it to the point where I would be able to survive the 400m swim in the river. And survive it I did!

Even if it was the most traumatic experience of my life! I was hyperventilating and the water was gross and I had to swim most of it survival backstroke because I couldn’t get my breathing right! So this year, as much as I don’t want to swim in the river again, I am up for the challenge to do more than just survive the swim. This year I am challenging myself to swim the whole 400m, no more survival backstroke. And I want to swim freestyle and breathe on both sides.

It was 38 degrees yesterday (thats 100 Fahrenheit for any Americans reading) so it was the perfect day to head down to the pools and get started with my swimming.

I had my trusty kick board and hopped into the ‘slow’ lane and took off swimming freestyle. I didn’t get very far. Within metres my chest felt tight and I was gasping for air! I had known it was going to be a struggle but I didn’t expect to be starting back from square one! I swam the next 50m breast stroke and then thought I’d have another go. I almost swam 25m before I was tensing up and struggling to breathe correctly. So for the next 50m I took it right back to basics and swam survival backstroke. This calmed me down instantly. I didn’t have to worry about breathing and could just enjoy being in the water. This was what made me realise that I did have to take it right back to basics. I was kidding myself to think there was any other way to get swimming again. So for my next lap I just swam with the kick board blowing bubbles. I’d count to four and then come up for air. I didn’t move my arms and just focused on my breathing so my lungs could get used to this feeling again. And then I remembered I was doing the exact same thing I did last year. I was still holding onto air when I was coming up for a breath. This meant I was still blowing out air and taking my next breath in the same amount of time I was just meant to be taking in air. So of course I was running out of air and causing myself to panic. It felt like a metaphor for my life. For all those time when I was still holding onto my pain or anger or resentment and trying to move forward. You can’t move forward until you just it let it all go. And that is exactly what I told myself to do. Just let it go. I had to let go of all the tension in my body, the expectations I had coming into the pool, the pressure I felt because I wasn’t living up to those expectations, the feeling that I wasn’t good enough.

I don’t know if it was the therapeutic effects of the water or my changed mindset but I just felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It was like I felt the stress leave my body with each stroke. I was still using the kick board (I wasn’t ready to let go of my training wheels yet lol) but I was so proud that 20 minutes earlier I had been struggling to breathe while swimming and now I had found my rhythm. More importantly I was breathing on both my right and my left side. I don’t know if it was the swimming last year and only breathing on my right side or some other issue but I have had issues with my neck for almost a year now. This is why it was important to me to breathe on both sides. I didn’t want to overwork the bad side of my neck.

Earlier this morning I had a remedial massage (blog to follow) and left with full motion in my neck and loose shoulders. In the afternoon I went to Port Coogee which is a man made beach cove. After playing with my nephew for a bit I grabbed my trusty kick board and goggles and had another go at freestyle. It was a completely different experience to swimming at the pool yesterday. I was calm and relaxed. My neck and shoulders were nice and loose. I was breathing on every fourth stroke. It was my fitness that let me down. I got tired pretty quickly but at least I had my breathing and my stroke in perfect rhythm. It will just take some practice to get my fitness back up to a decent level. It makes sense that my swimming ability is back to square one because I haven’t trained in almost a year. I had put too much pressure on myself to be a decent swimmer and once I let go of those self imposed expectations I allowed myself to accept the body I have today and trust that with hard work and determination I will get to the level I need to be.

So this is what I’ve learnt in the past 24 hours
Let it go
Let go of any expectations, stress, pressure. Just let it all go