Back in the swim of things

Yes, I said swim.  And golly gee, I meant it.

So I began swimming again after a very long hiatus from my beloved activity.  This has been wonderful and horrible at the same time.  If you read post about being fat, weak and out of shape, you know why.  (That's why.  Cuz I'm fat, weak and out of shape.)

The wonderful part is being able to be back in the pool again.  The feel of being underwater and to be moving and doing an IM set (although after about 1 length of fly I'm quite reverting to a one-arm fly manouver), a kick set or anything else.  For the love of being chlorinated!  Oh joy!  (And as a side note, some people ask me - because of my crazy list of things I do not do or eat or use - if I have a horrible problem with chlorine and being subjected to the yuck of it.  The short answer is, "NO WAY, I LOVE SMELLING LIKE CHLORINE!!"  I am sorry.  I know it doesn't make any sense.  But it's just the truth.  File it under my vice.)

But the horror of it all is how disgustingly slow I have become from being out of practice.  Times that I would make sets on with piles and buckets of rest left over are now the times I'm pulling in and hitting the wall.  The regular 4x250's are becoming one slow straight 1000, flipturning those breaks right out.

Now for being as bad as it is, there is one plus.  Most of my swimmer peeps do outdoor swimming in the summer at the meter pools.  I don't.  I just stick with my good ol' pool.  What this means for this situation is that I can come back to normalcy without many people noticing since most of them will see me when they return in the fall and by then I'll be nearly back to normal.

But.

BUT!

Oh sad.

The few people I do swim with are nice friends who care about me and are wonderful swimmers and know where I was and what I used to be when I was in shape.  They know that my current horror is due to my long pool absence.

HOWEVER.

Oh my goodness, this is so sad.  So there's this woman there at the pool.  She never swims with us.  She is good enough to do so, she just chooses not to and does her own workout instead.  She is a triathlete also and you can tell by looking at her that she is.  She is very fit.

But.

Last week she decided to swim with us.

Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you don't get it, it is because you a) don't know me or b) have no shred of being competitive anywhere in any scrap of your entire being.

The sad: today she swam in the lane NEXT TO ME.  Oh poopers.  I am this slug plopping along the lane and she is tearing it up.  Now I have to say, just because I am such a cow, that the bad part is I have looked over before and seen her swimming and I used to beat her no problema.  And now.  And NOW!

She is passing me along like I am a granny doing sidestroke at the motel.

You can't really explain!  You can't say, "So eh, yeah, I am extremely fat, weak and out of shape right now (*cough*whichiswhyyou'rebeatingme*cough*), but uh, yeah, I uh, used to be a lot faster, um..."

Yeah, no.  You can think it in your head, but you can't get away with it gracefully.  Stinks.  She was RIGHT THERE.

Oh, argh.

I'll get you next time, Gadget, next time!

Peace, love and when will then be now,
Ms. Daisy

Fat, weak and out of shape

I found out today something I've wondered for ages.  The quandry was this:

Why, oh why, do some people hate working out and not do it?  (Excused are those who do manual labor daily, of course.  I only wonder at this for the sedentary suburbanites and/or urbanites.  I suppose some people who live in rural areas may be sedentary, and if so, fine, they can lump in, too.  Heck, throw the whole world in.)

I discovered the answer today.  Perhaps it is not shocking to you.  Perhaps you already know.  Perhaps it was something you hope the government will not spend $4.5 billion dollars to find out.  (I am among those in the latter category.)

The answer is shockingly simple.

I surmise the reason people hate working out and don't do it is threefold - it is because they are fat, weak and/or totally out of shape.  Don't be offended.  Let me tell you why not - I just found this out because today I found out that I am this pathetic person.  

I have been forced to live a very sedentary (one step up above bedrest) life for the last five months or so.  My exercise included difficult things like turning the pages of books, walking from the couch to the bathroom to the kitchen table and back to the couch, and lifting my tea cup from the table up to my mouth.  At first I thought I might poke my eyes out with a wombat at the torture of it, but I decided to make the best of it (studying grammar, reading more intensely, researching crazy topics, etc.) and the deep disturbance left me and I began to accept it as what must be.

But now I've gotten the green light to pick back up again and go back to life as usual.  Mostly.  So today I began what would have been a day in the regular life of Ms. Daisy back before near-bedrest set in.  This means that yours truly was up with the chirping birds at 5:00, off to the the pool to swim for an hour with my dear friends and fellow masters swimmers.

I love swimming.  I mean, LOVE.  And thankfully I swim with some absolutely fantastic swimmers.  Several of them have their names plastered on university natatoriums across the country.  We've even had the rare and lovely pleasure of swimming with Sheila Taormina, the olympic swimmer and olympic triathlete/pentathlete.  These people are beasts in the pool.  I am not them, but I happily trail behind my friends the sharks, chasing them down the lanes in good guppy-fashion.  

They have inspired and challenged me to kick it up a notch (or fifty) and before I had to sit on the couch for five months, I was swimming like I was my old high school swim capitan self.  Last year I participated in a fun (husband's translation: insane) swim that was a 5k through a chain of lakes.  I may have even lucked out and won first place for my age division.  I say this not to boast of my fabulous accomplishments, I am telling you this so you have an understanding of my mindset and to show you how pathetic I've become.

I used to run 5 miles three times a week (interspersed with the swimming on the other 3 days a week) and play volleyball once a week in a league.

So it was through these eyes that I looked at the participants on the show The Biggest Loser and said, "Why don't they just like run a marathon or something?  Or maybe they could swim a 10k and just get it over with!  Or maybe they should sign up for those cross-state bike races.  I don't get it."  (I said this while doing pull ups on the kitchen pull up bar...of course.)

How.  Ev.  Er.

Sitting on the couch for five months KIND OF CHANGES THINGS.  (This capitalized part should be read loudly and dramatically, in case you were wondering.)

So my brain was this brain who went with my newly pathetic body off to the pool.  Let me just tell you, they weren't getting along.  I swam three laps - THREE LAPS - and my arms started to feel it.  My previous self would have many days of not feeling anything at all after swimming the full workout for an hour.  So it was my in-shape brain who started yelling at my arms.  "What are you doing? What on earth is wrong with you??" The arms whimpered something pathetic, "We're tiiiired.  Waah."

The brain went back at it again, "Well I don't care, GO FASTER."  
Arms:  We caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan't.  Waaah.
Brain:  Do you even see your 50 split time?  You are seriously like the most wussy swimmer anyone could imagine right now.
Arms: Go night-night.  Tiiiiiiiiiiiired.  Owie.

Yeah.  Good news is there's nowhere to go but up?  

I got home and the hubby asked how it was.  After I told him, he said, "Now you know how I feel about swimming!"  He had this gleeful look in his eye, perhaps from him remembering how I smirked and guffawed when after I explained the warm up to him, he said he wouldn't be interested in swimming with me.  Ever.

Yes, well.

All I can say is that I'm thankful that my brain is stronger than my arms.  

And now, for a quick nap on the couch...

Peace, love and I just can't wait for my first 5 mile run,
Ms. Daisy