Laura: It's still coming together

I had an interesting swim on Friday. I hopped in the lane next to two ironman triathletes - always good for the self esteem and success of a work out. Anyway. The first lap always feels pretty good, then the shoulders get tired and I remember that I am not a swimmer. I don't move through the water with grace and when I really push myself I feel like the whole pool can hear me gasping for air ... does anyone else feel this way? Andy?

The workout started out kinda crappy and I was feeling lazy. I usually hit the pool then think of a previous work out I've done and do that or poach of the white board that is there from the earlier masters swim group. Well this isn't my normal swim day so their were no notes on the white board. I intended to do my warm up then swim a 200 - which turned into a 100. I told you it started off kinda crappy I was feeling weak and like a loser. Ha The drama! I was able to do two longer sets and then some speed work. I was REALLY surprised when the speed work came together pretty well. I was actually able to coordinate swimming and kicking - yes seems like a duh thing for people who actually swim, but I had not been able to previously use a strong kick while actually swimming. It was more like dragging my legs behind me and occasionally remembering that they are back there and that they are supposed to be kicking. I was also able to forget about the ironman (one woman, one man) in the next lane and just swim my sets. Then I was going to do some longer sets after which turned into one log set and one medium set. I'm not even going to tell you what "long" is right now b/c I need to do some research to see what distance I should be swimming right now as my training schedule only says 45 mins. I fear that I should be swimming much longer than I actually am in this amount of time, but hey, at least I'm doing two bricks a week.

I read a promising article in triathlete magazine for swimmers like me... I would attempt to summarize it for you here, but I read it this morning and, well, it's evening now so the details are fuzzy, but the overall thing is to stop trying so damn hard! Refer back to my feeling of gasping for air. If you are reading this and actually participate in triathlons or would like to (otherwise.. if you give a rat's ass) you can check the article out HERE.

Today I ran outside for the first time in a while. No jogger, but 2 inches of fresh snow. Man that stuff is HARD to run in. I had my iPod w/ me 'in case' I needed for motivation. I really don't want to get addicted to that thing. I've never run w/ any music before b/c it is kind of like my escape from it all, but I'm digging it at the gym to keep me focused. I used it to drown out the noise my feet were making in the snow and to get me through a challenging workout. I decided I'll stop using it in the spring/summer when the weather is nice enough to keep me motivated. Not to mention that when the weather is nicer their are a lot more people out there to smile at. :)