In Training... Confession to Wandee.

So, I'm training for a triathlon.  It's a sprint triathlon.  1/4 mile swim, 13 mile bike, and 5K run. Nothing huge to many who are much crazier than I am, but a ridiculous idea to someone like my dad.  But then again, he thinks that the 24 hour workout is a great idea.  What's the 24 hour workout?  Well, that's easy.  You figure out how many days it would take you to get into great shape by working out one hour every day.  Let's say that you're in need of 6 months to get into great shape, well, then you just work out for 180 hours straight, and you'll be in perfect condition in 7 1/2 days instead of 6 months.

I think his philosophy is flawed, so I have been training for this September triathlon for a couple of months.

Now, I love the biking part.  It's great.  And the running... Even running feels good if I can hit my stride, but the swimming.  Ugh.

The swimming.

First of all, there is the problem of breathing.  You can't just breathe when you need to breathe, taking a full breath and, you know, letting it out and taking another one.  No.  You have to do this whole bilateral breathing and breath control thing.

Then there's the hours.  Lap swim where there are actually lanes available occurs at 5-7:30am.  Now I don't know about you, but the idea purposefully waking up that early to jump into a pool to not breathe enough and flail through the water for a while does not sound like a great idea.  My friend, Wandee, claims that it is "refreshing."  I think that she is confusing "refreshing" with "torture."

It might be cool if I could breathe underwater like Aquawoman or something.  Or if I had been born part fish like my hubby or something, but I am merely a normal mammal who flails around in the water.

So I find myself not waking up early to swim on principle of "I am not a stupid person, and waking up at 6am to jump into a cold pool and torture myself is stupid."  So I wait until later in the day when there are water aerobics classes happening in the lap swim area and one lane open for swimming and 5 people in the lane begging to kick me in the face and make me feel like I'm drowning anyway.  So... I sit in the hot tub for the amount of time I was supposed to be swimming, enjoy my kid-free time, and leave telling myself, there was really nothing I could do.  The pool was just too busy. I'll just get my swim in tomorrow after my run.  


But guess what.  I don't wake up to run at 6am, and the pool is closed for lap swim at 9.  Which means that I don't swim.

I would wake up early to swim, but it's just too stupid.  And I am not stupid.