LGN 127: Swimming 3.5

Well, folks. I think I’ve done it. I beat swimming.

It’s pretty much a wrap so everyone else might as well stop. Swimming is over. That includes you, water-based fauna. You might as well evolve, grow legs and come up here on land. Or go into space where, let’s be honest, half of you cluckers look like you came from somewhere out there, anyway. There’s really no point anymore after the perfection I achieved tonight. As far as  you hu-mans go, you might as well retire your little Olympics competitions and your freediving and your water births and your amniotic fluds and your —

Game over. Get out. This is my domain, now. You in my house.

Okay. I may be exaggerating a little bit.

Let me say this again, though. This MyZone not working in the water is bullsquat. I am getting my ass kicked twice a week and there’s no way to account for that for my activity goals. And as long as we’re talking about first world problems the Ap … you know what? Ne’mind. I just realized how much of a USDA certified doucheweasel I was about to sound like.

First, the bad news. Backstroke. Not good. I threw water directly into my bronchi somehow.

“Relax. Have fun with it. You’re throwing water into your face.”

[reflexive violent coughing, visions of ancestors, tempted to go toward the light] “I know.”

Now the good news.

I swam an entire lap non-stop, freestyle. 25 yards. Is one way a lap? Oh, damn. One way is a length. Down and back is one lap. Thirty three laps = one mile. Well, I swam one length for the first time then.

Hm. I just looked up workouts for swimming endurance.

Warmup: 200 yards
4 x 50 yards — easy (rest as needed)
Intervals: 200 yards
2 x 100 yards — build speed (rest: 1 minute)
Endurance: 200 yards
1 x 200 yards — moderate (rest as needed)
Warmdown: 100 yards
4 x 25 yards — easy (rest as needed)

Warm up with 200 yards?! Go %$@! yourself, workout. Alright. Everybody back in the pool/lake/pond/stream/river/ocean. Swimming is back on. Whatever.

AND! And. I floated on my back for real. Last week (and this week and every other week I’ve had a swimming class) the instructor kept telling me to get my hips up and float. “Get your hips up and relax.”

I would have sworn to you on a stack of pancakes (and then wordlessly eaten that stack of pancakes while you watched) that my hips and lower body sink. Period. That’s what they want to do so that’s what they do. I practice after classes usually and tonight something clicked. It wasn’t so much the hips up and knees bent. I mean, yes. But it was “pushing” down on my back. Directing or applying force on my back kind of between the shoulder blades into the water and then my hips and thighs rose up to the surface. Then I could relax my knees and my calves rose up to the surface.

The instructor was putting equipment away, saw me and told me to adjust my arms and boom. There I was. Floating on my back. It was amazing. The sensation of floating on water. For the first time. Laying on water. It’s like … water can be my friend??

Somebody remind me to stretch and roll out before class, though. It’s brutal when you’re tight in all the wrong places.

Quote of the night:

Assisting instructor: [Calls my name from the other end of the pool]

Me: [doggy paddle over to her expecting a compliment and (just a) tip on my new float skills]

Assisting instructor: “The lifeguard wanted me to tell you that when you practice floating move something so it doesn’t look like you’re dead.”

Me [thinking]: “I’ll take that as a compliment.”