Ow! Ow! Ow! Water Up My Nose!!!

Finally I am back in the pool!! My tattoo put a stop to not only my running and biking, due to shoe issues, but also to my swimming. Finally though, I got to go for a swim. It was HEAVEN!!

It's a little amusing that I think that swimming is heaven now...ask me what I thought of it last year! I used to swim as a kid, but as an adult all I did was frollick in the water and think it was swimming. haha. Talk about a rude awakening when I decided to give triathlon a go and had to swim 25 m. I thought I was going to die!! I was gasping for air, head held high while doing front stroke and I clung to the diving board at the other end while begging my coach not to make me swim back!

At the end of last year though I signed up for some swim technique classes. They were once a month, but wow did it make a difference for me for this year! Plus, I re-discovered my love of swimming!! As last years classes were so great, I signed up for more with the same coach.

My classes will be on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from now until the end of December. I'll also throw in swims on Monday mornings so I can practice what I learned.

This morning was my first swim since IMC, and I gotta say, it felt great. I felt strong and, well, for me at least, I felt fast! We did a 600 m warm up to start, then Jen, our coach, broke the news. We were to learn flip turns today. (Boy did I ever pick a great day to start swimming! haha).

I have tried the dreaded flip turn before. All I ended up doing was getting a brain enima, haha. I tried to use the argument that I only do lake swims in my triathlons, but Jen wasn't going for it. Her point was that we spend most of our time in the pool training, and doing flip turns will make us more efficient in keeping our pace. She had a point there. Dammit!!

I don't think I need to go into great detail here...let's just say it was chaos at first. I would flip and be totally disoriented and facing sideways. Hmmm. Then I kind of got the flip, but was no where near the wall to push off. haha. I even managed to bump my head on the lane divider when I surfaced one time! How the heck that happened, I have no idea....I started off in the middle of the lane!

After a few tries she had us swim 200 m and we had to do flip turns at each end. She's a slave driver I say!! I did so-so in the shallow end, but the deep end threw me off. I'm not sure why. Maybe because the line that signaled I was to take a stroke then flip seemed distorted due to the depth of the pool? Oh, and did I mention I managed to kick the guy behind me after I did a pseudo flip? Lord only knows where! Thankfully there was no blood and he was a good sport about it. I felt horrible!! haha.

Jen said that we'd get lots of practice because she wants us to do this each class with our drills and swim. Ah well, practice does make perfect. Even if it means me floundering at each end of the pool for a while.

One good thing from this little adventure....my sinuses are nice and cleaned out now!!!