pool school

so, i totally got my ass handed to me in the pool this morning.

i shared a lane with a large, muscle-y Asian girl with back muscles that could beat me up all on their own. and in the lane next to us was a lady with -2% body fat and an M-dot tattoo on her shoulder.

muscle-y girl in my lane was doing some sort of long repeat, 400's if i counted right. she was still finishing faster than me, and i was doing 250 repeats AS FAST AS I COULD GO.

i don't look forward to these anaerobic swim workouts--i've always had a hard time with them. yes, i know they're supposed to be hard, but i have an especially hard time. the wheels fall off the bus if i have to go fast. so this workout takes some mental peptalk just to get me into the water. then it takes more peptalk to do the workout as prescribed (and not, say, take a 1:15 rest instead of 30s...)

so imagine how absolutely thrilled i was to be between these two Speedy Gonzalez ladies on my least favorite day in the pool. two years ago, before the kidlet, i would have just wussed out and not done the speed work. i probably would have done some super easy drills and sloooow laps just to prove that they were only going faster than me because i wasn't trying.

not today. i gave it my all (please read to the tune of Mumford & Sons 'i gave my all'). granted, i still got my ass handed to me, but i really tried my best. and i stayed focused on swimming the best repeats i could, and not trying to swim like the ladies next to me. it was excellent mental practice for Louisville, where i am likely to get passed by 70% of the field. (that, and muscle-y girl was super big and splashy, so i got practice in choke-swallow-neti-potting water and near drowning in her wake. )

now, i'm not posting this to be all 'oooh poor me i'm soooo slow' and then sandbag it and really swim 1:20 100s. i can swim, and i swim a lot, but i still don't consider myself a swimmer. i only did one summer of swim team in 5th grade. all of my swimming ability, or lack thereof, is self-taught. i'm not terrible--i'm just not a natural swimmer. i feel kind of like this most of the time:

which is why i'm proud of myself today. i think i've earned a nap!