Roller Coaster

I love roller coasters! The kind in amusement parks anyway......

Emotional roller coasters aren't quite as much fun. I always experience all of the nausea but very little thrill.

Since my last post, I have been on an emotional roller coaster extraordinaire. I received the books I had been anxiously waiting for the other day, "Dover Solo" and "The Young Woman and the Sea". I immediately started in on "Dover Solo" as it was recommended by Karen Reeder and was a direct account of one swimmer's experience preparing for and swimming the English Channel.

After the first chapter, I was thoroughly discouraged. The author of the book, Marcia Cleveland, had been swimming since she could walk and swimming competitively for at least a decade and when she decided to swim the English Channel, she gave herself three years to prepare. THREE YEARS! How could I, an untrained swimmer who has never competed and is the overweight, out of shape, working mother of three teenage boys, possibly expect to be ready in FIVE YEARS?!?!?!? WHAT AM I THINKING?!?!?

I continued reading and became more discouraged. Marcia was swimming 45,000 yards each week and spending lots of time in the open sea. I can barely find time to get to the pool twice a week and I live in Iowa....about as far from the open sea as you can get in the wonderful United States of America!

At times I was able to distract myself from the negative thoughts and just read the story. She had an incredible journey and the amount of training and preparation she committed to is absolutely astounding. She successfully crossed on her first try to become the 445th person to swim the channel. Oh, by the way, more people have been in outer space than have successfully swum the English Channel! Have I mentioned that before?

I was planning to swim again on Saturday morning, the start of a long day of chores both inside and out. We attended my son, Mason's, football game on Friday night and within the first series of plays, he was injured. I watched from the bleachers, wondering what was going on and what had happened, as Mason fought an incredible amount of back pain. After observing his movements, I was sure he had sustained a disc injury. I ruptured a disc in 2005 and can easily recognize the telltale movements and signs of that type of pain. Most of me was worried and concerned about him but a little, tiny part of me was upset that I wouldn't be able to make my early morning swim as I would be spending the morning in a dr's office. I know that sounds horrible. I'm an insensitive and selfish mother thinking those thoughts, but when do I get time for me?

Luckily, Mason checked out with nothing more than a pulled / strained muscle in his back due to a tight hamstring from an earlier injury. He's in a lot of pain but with stretching and rest he should be back to it in no time at all.

So, after a long weekend of nursing duties, yard work, grape harvest, and laundry I'm back to Monday and made it to the pool. Yeah!! My coach, Randy, gave me a new workout - 30 lengths with the kickboard, legs only. As you may recall, last time my feet cramped so badly I thought I'd scream. I was, however, able to get out of bed unassisted the following morning so I wasn't dreading it too much.

In addition to everything else that had happened in the last 5 days, I finished "Dover Solo" and started reading "The Young Woman and the Sea". I was hoping I would find a little more hope and encouragement directly related to my situation and I was right! The book is full of history of swimming, the origin of the "crawl" stroke, how the English Channel was formed, how it became socially acceptable for women to learn to swim and so on. I came to the solid realization that my freestyle "style" needed to be seriously evaluated and a change needed to be made. After reading descriptions of swimmers "thrashing through the water without much forward motion", I thought to myself, "This is precisely how I felt the first time back in the water after all these years.".

I began doing research online for help and tips on more efficient freestyle methods and found something called Total Immersion Swimming. I watched a YouTube video and a lightbulb went on!!! I immediately realized that if I was going to do this I had to learn this technique! The technique consists of more fluid motions, a longer and leaner line, and efficient power stroke kick instead of flutter kick. I watched the video about 15 more times to try to take in all the details. I shared this information with Randy and he seemed interested as well.

Back to my workout. I entered the pool knowing that by the 4 length my legs would begin to tighten, by the 8th length my feet would cramp, but that eventually I would find a rhythm and be fine. I was confident I could add 10 lengths to the workout but figured I would probably struggle a little to finish. Well, guess what?! By the 2nd length I thought I was going to die and was regretting the spicy chicken sandwich I ate for dinner! But then, something amazing happened.....I got warmed up and felt great by the 6th length. Even more amazing was the fact that my feet didn't cramp and my breathing came easier than before. At length 26, I decided to try a little 2 stroke power kick following the TI method and I couldn't believe the difference! My body was so much more efficient and I traveled to the other end of the pool much more quickly than with the flutter kick. My time ran out, but I exited the pool thinking that TI had some real potential benefits.