Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Conquering Fears

This morning my alarm went off at 5:45am (I generally vow not to get up before the 6am mark so this was big!) and rolled out of bed to face my fears. I have always loved water and swimming but have never been the greatest at it. Somehow I managed to become a lifeguard and swimming instructor for the sole purpose of obtaining my camp dream job of waterfront director. Some of the levels to get there required swimming many laps in a certain amount of time and I always struggled. Endurance has never been my strong point, in any sport. For Bronze Cross I wasn't able to finish the laps in the required time but may have lied to my instructor that I did it at the pool another time. Okay, I did lied and thus my whole lifeguarding career was probably a fraud. Not a highlight for me. But I assure you, I knew how to save a life.

Our gym has beautiful lap pools both indoors and out, so I've been working a lot on my swimming the last year or so. I took four lessons a few months ago to work on my strokes and have done hundreds of laps but knew I needed a boost to kick up my endurance. So this morning I joined the Masters swimming program at the gym. Don't let the name fool you. The requirement was that you can swim two laps well, which I can but there are some great swimmers that train and go to swim meets. For some reason I have been terrified to join this group. It might have to do with the fact that my ONE day on the high school swim team, I kept getting moved further and further down the pool for being slow, until I was finally at the end, and never came back.

When I arrived in my 6:30am sleepiness, I introduced myself to the coach, told her I was a beginner and off I went, in the slowest lane of course. All the lengths today were to be done in the butterfly stroke, the hardest one of all. She modified it for me and let me do what I wanted, thank goodness. The warm-up itself was at least 20 laps, generally more than I swim at once. While everyone was done their sets I was still going, kicking and pulling my way through but determined to finish. Overall, it was tiring but a very positive experience and I actually think I might get better. I signed up for four weeks so will be back at it in two days. It feels good to do something that I was fearful of, and although it's just swimming, hopeful it will transfer to the more important things in life.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You go, girl! I don't think I could even swim one lap. ;)
Arja