The Best $54 I Ever Spent

It was a good running week, as long as you ignore my getting lost on the No Boundaries route for the second time in two weeks. I ran a two-mile loop instead of the 1.75 mile loop. This made for a better workout but it’s getting embarrassing.

It was a seven-mile week at a 9:16 average pace, but this morning I ran my regular 1.75 mile loop at 8:29 pace, so it’s time to increase mileage. Next week I’ll run the prescribed distances with the NoBo group on Tuesday and Thursday, and 2.4 miles on Saturday and Sunday.

The improvement in running is noteworthy because this week I also began my swimming lessons – four days of a half-hour each. Monday was spent getting acquainted with the water, which wasn’t a problem for me, but some of the other students have a primeval fear of it.

Tuesday was kickboard day, and I was having a tough time of it. No matter how much kicking I did, I remained in one spot. It was frustrating but I had a major breakthrough on Wednesday when I did one simple thing – I got rid of the kickboard.

Suddenly I was moving through the water like this guy:

OK, maybe not, but everything worked as advertised. On Thursday we added arm strokes, and although I thought tying it all together would be difficult, it was actually easier. The arm strokes and leg kicks worked in unison, I had my head down in proper position, and I swam across the pool.

You might think it’s hard to get excited about doing something that eight-year-olds are doing better than you at the same time down at the other end of the pool, but I was overjoyed.

I spent the rest of the session practicing my newfound skill, and worked further on my own on Friday. The instructor was able to give me pointers on side-breathing, and I need more practice not lifting my head to breathe, but really, everything went… swimmingly.

If I had known I could progress this far after two hours of instruction and a $54 investment, I would have done this, oh, about 30 years ago.

I have another four lessons this week, but I think I finally found cross-training I can enjoy. I find it’s easier on my muscles than I thought, but it’s a lot more cardio than I thought, too. It feels kind of like running intervals.

I’m not going to turn this into a swimming blog, but it was a nice reminder of the feeling I got when I first started running. We get so caught up in PRs and training plans that we forget how neat it is just to do a sport.