Gliding in the Water

Yesterday I went swimming in the new town pool for the first time. What clean, wonderful water it was--and non-chlorinated! It was such a treat to come out of the water not feeling covered in chemicals for the next day. Because of this upcoming triathlon, I have no choice but to spend some significant time there in the next 3 weeks.

Which I'm glad for, really. Its pushing me outside my comfort limits. You can bet you wouldn't have found me swimming laps in the pool if I didn't have this race to train for. (Especially with Patrick gone. I had to hire a babysitter to hang with the kids for an hour at the library for an hour while I went swimming...it worked out well but took a lot of coordination effort to make it all happen)

Yesterday, I actually started to feel myself getting the hang of crawl stroke. Its as though some of the pieces are coming together, and it doesn't feel as labored. Don't get me wrong, I can still only do 1 length of the pool at a time of freestyle, but its feeling a tad bit easier. I feel less out of breath and am actually "enjoying" it a little bit more. (Did I really just write that?)

The other day I thought back to my first few times in the coast guard pool this year and how I was absolutely dying doing very little freestyle and mostly kickboard/flipper swimming. It truly is about seeing the small progress and recognizing that I'm slowly getting stronger and hopefully I'll be ready on the 6th of November! Instead of panicking about the fact that I still can't even do a full lap of consecutive freestyle stroke, I'm trying to just see the progress that has been made thus far and know in my heart of hearts that all will work out well and I'll be ready somehow on race day.

Zoya