Mandy wasn't there again today. For swim, I was trying not to have a fearful mindset--swimming can actually be pretty fun if you aren't racing (too bad I'm racing).
I realized when I pulled up to the pool today that I have a childhood fear of swimming lessons that I'd forgotten all about: when I was about three or four years old, I went to swimming lessons and I was terrified to go underwater. Some 16-year-old Gonzales girl was our teacher, and I was so vocal about not going underwater and just completely refusing. I really liked wearing floaties (or water-wings) on my arms and felt scared without them, but we had to go without in lessons and I couldn't touch the bottom of the pool with my feet even in the shallow end, which made me doubly uncomfortable. I remember clutching this metal bar thing attached to a kind of gutter where the water overflowed. My feet were dangling. The exercise was to hang on to these foam barbells and kick. The teacher was holding my barbells and I remember saying "Don't let go" over and over to her while I kicked (and I was probably crying and yelling). I didn't trust her and she was probably getting very frustrated with me because I was a very obstinate child. I could be remembering this wrong, but she said it was time to try to go underwater and I said no and she either dunked me or she let go of the barbell and I freaked out and slipped under and choked on a bunch of water. I think she was trying to show me that it wasn't really as bad as I thought it was going to be. She failed.
It was another two years before I chose to try it on my own (first dipping my face and then going all the way under in a safe, exploratory way).
Anyway, I did okay today except for the fact that I accidentally swallowed a bunch of nasty chlorine water again in the middle of a lap and I did much fewer laps than I was asked to. I did well on the "pulls" where you put a foam peanut between your legs and use only arms. I think my stroke is improving a little bit even though I was the caboose again (but part of that was due to the choking and fiddling with my ear plugs).
When we had to jump out of the pool and pull on our shorts and shoes for the run, I realized that it wasn't really going to happen for me today. My legs feel extremely sore and weak from sprints on Monday and got tired immediately from a light jog. I started walking soon after. My head felt light and I was nauseated from the combination of heat and my high heart rate (we swim and run outside). We jogged around the facility and then ran intervals up and down a traffic ramp. I managed to jog the ramp twice but then I just waited with another lady at the bottom until everyone else was done. Then I mostly walked back with a tiny bit of jogging when Anna told me to, but only then.
I definitely "took it easy" today in terms of what I probably could have done. But I still showed up and made it through class, so it's nothing to feel disappointed about. G also told me Monday that it is too early in the game to start worrying about whether I can hang tough in the race or not. I met a Brandy today as well, who was super nice. She did it last year and said the race was going to be easy after what we've been doing. That was a small comfort.
In other health news, I just started reading Women Food and God by Geneen Roth and it is well-written and brilliant. It's shifting the way I look at food and eating already. I tend to eat (and drink) too fast and too much (and too unconsciously) because I expect the food to distract me from life and give me lots of pleasure, and then I don't want the meal to end. Anything to help me be more conscious and awake while eating is a good thing, and this is certainly the best thing I've read on the subject so far. Her thesis is "The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive."
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