Skip to main content

When your lane leaves you behind

Well. First Emmit trained for the Ironman and left all of us L2ers in the dust for L1B. Then, last week Whitney said "Wow. I haven't been swimming hard for so long. Like a year. I don't know why I stopped. It feels so good."

"Crap", I thought, "I've been swimming hard the whole time and barely keeping up with her". She ducked under the lane line just a day later and is now leading in L1B.

Then today, David, whom I happen to know has missed multiple swims and sat through long meetings that didn't give him any aerobic training lately, slid under the lane line as well, and together they all kicked my butt through the long pulling set.

One of a few things is happening here. Either I'm getting slower (definitely possible), they're getting faster (almost 100% sure this is the case), or some sort of public elementary school-like transition (whereby Kindergarten is the new first grade, first grade is the new second grade, etc. etc.) is happening so that L1B is now the new L2A and L2A is now the new L2B. This is all very disturbing--much like sending your four-year-old to Kindergarten and having him come home with a full three ring binder of homework for the year's duration (to be recorded meticulously on a daily calendar by, whom else, MOM) and being told that he must be reading Dostoevsky to progress to the first grade.

Whew. Okay perhaps I can just slip some folks some cash and bribe them back to my lane. I just...don't...do well with change.

*warm up: I missed the explanation of the set. I still did it, but I didn't ask what we were doing, so I have no idea what I did. You see? I knew this would happen the day after this post, but I refused to ask what was going on.

add pull gear for:
*1000 straight, done as 200 easy, 200 moderate, 200 best effort, 200 moderate, 200 easy
100 DPS
50 one arm
100 fast

*500 straight, done as above but by 100's
100 DPS
50 one arm
100 fast

*3 x 250's free

Comments

Emmit said…
I miss swimming with you too, but I was feeling too much pressure to lead in your lane (please refer to my comment on your "listening" post). It's much easier for me to save face when I'm expected to be in the back--more time to process what the set is.

Popular posts from this blog

Tell me about yourself...

This is fun. I don't get to swim on Wednesdays so here's some (mostly) non-swimming information about me that I hope you will not use inappropriately against me. It's really fun to answer these questions if only for yourself. Do it. Then post them here because I'd love to know more about all of you! 1.) Q. Can you cook? A. Well, I can read, so I can follow a recipe. Can I make anything without a recipe? Yes: Cinnamon toast. 2.) Q. What was your dream growing up? A. To be happy. 3.) Q. What talent do you wish you had? A. I wish I could sing, big time! 4.) Q. Favorite place? A. California (home) 5.) Q. Favorite vegetable? A. Sweet Potato 6.) Q. What was the last book you read? A. To my kids: The Important Book, to myself: Slow Man 7.) Q. What zodiac sign are you? A. Sagittarius, but I put zero stock in signs 8.) Q. Any tattoo's or piercings? A. Yes, both 9.) Q. Worst habit? A. Never cleaning out my car 10.) Q. If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a...

PURE

The workout email said 3 x 1000's PURE for today and yes it was! Last night I read the short story "Swimming" in the recent New Yorker and this morning it came back to me. As T Cooper wrote, "You know that feeling (while swimming)...where you're pushing so hard that you understand how a body could just as easily die as live, that living is just the absence of death, and thus always in a relationship with death?" Yes, I know that feeling. All of us do, even if we haven't expressed it so eloquently. At those moments I tend to think about someone or something that has truly pissed me off recently, and I work out the anger. I imagine very inappropriate scenes where we (myself and that offending person) are in a group and they chance to say something slightly off-color. I rip into them and teach them a lesson about ignorance or bigotry or just plain pettiness, and they understand how base they have been. Okay, sometimes I also swimdream about the perfect par...