Tri Swimming for a change

Swimming is unpredictably hard.

I can swim, well, really I can float and simultaneously kick my feet and move my arms. That may technically be swimming but when Iwatch people that can really swim, even my 8th grade son’s swim team, I realize just how pathetic what I call swimming and what they do really is. Today was the first day to change that. Today was my first day of taking a master’s swim class and it was hard to find the serenity of the whole sport when you are trying NOT to breathe in water. This morning was a morning of many firsts….. up at 4:30am to go swim, wearing my tri shorts, that I got so that I can swim and bike and run in the same pair of pants, as a swimsuit, taking goggles out of the package and trying to fit them on my head and eyes, trying to watch the other swimmers at 5am so that I could not look like such a newbie, not finding a regular clock on a wall to tell me the current time versus elapsed time and trying to read swim jargon off of a white board like 4x 25, IMO and other cryptic symbols reserved for the people that have been swimming/training for more than one day. In the end…. I was better at the end of the hour than at the first part. I only tried to inhale underwater twice (both times were unsuccessful) and I didn’t need to be rescued out of the water, so it was a great start I’d say.