Waiting to Exhale
It was nice to get back out on the road again, even in a limited way. I ran a total of 7 miles this week, averaging a 9:20 pace. For the foreseeable future, I’ll run only four days a week, but I have added two days of cross-training – one of light weights and one of swimming.
Well, I can’t really call it swimming yet because, hard as it may be to believe, I never learned to swim. I can float without a problem and I have snorkeled in deep water while wearing a vest, but my “swimming” can just about get me across a pool, frog-style, as long as I can hold my breath.
Once out of your teens, you’re too embarrassed to try to learn to swim because you think you’ll look stupid. But now that I’m 51 years old, I look stupid trying to do anything, so I might as well learn to swim. I signed up for adult swimming lessons. They begin next week.
I don’t want to go in completely clueless, so I did a a little Internet research on swimming. I learned that in order to swim properly you have to exhale into the water and turn your head to inhale. Apparently this is the biggest hurdle for beginning swimmers and I understand why. Air in your lungs makes you float. Air out of your lungs makes you sink. Mentally overcoming that calculus is a challenge.
So I headed out to the pool – early, before anyone else showed up – and I practiced breathing. Even though I’ve been doing it all my life, it turns out I need some work on it. I have to break my bad habit of holding my breath underwater, then trying to exhale and inhale in the short time my head is out of the water. Chlorine is so tasty.
Anyway, I learned you can get a pretty good aerobic workout simply by lying face down in the water and blowing bubbles out of your nose. Twenty minutes of that and I felt as though I had been doing hill repeats. Still, there is a little spark of excitement whenever you try something new, even if you stink at it. I’m looking forward to my lessons.
You might think I am now on the long road to triathlons, and I could be, except for one thing.
I never learned to ride a bike.
I look forward to your posts about your lessons, progress etc… I’m your age and ALSO don’t know how to swim! I’m still at the ‘Aaghh…I’m too scared’ stage. You are an inspiration!
I took swimming lessons this year for the first time. Still working on the breathing thing myself so don’t feel bad. We’ll be crap at swimming together. :)
Dude, I feel your pain. I learned how to swim last summer and the first few lessons kicked my ass, but within 5 lessons I was cruising. You can do it.
I think you’ll like swimming. It’s a nice break from the pounding on the pavement.
Have fun!