By mid-March the weather had turned brutally cold on much of the East coast. I had been practicing swimming three days a week and I was already six weeks in to my new "sport". Between January and March I had dedicated much of my swim time doing various drills. Probably 80% of my practice was drill sets, while the other 20% was spent trying to figure out whole stroke swimming. AND, by this point I was a swim fin addict. "Hello. My name is Arletta and I'm a swim fin addict". That's how the story went.
Some stupid inner voice lied to me and said that I could get myself off the swim fins whenever I was ready. This turned out to be terrible advice from the stupid voice, so don't listen to the stupid voice. It's only a temporary fix.
It was a random March day and I was finishing up my practice set when a lifeguard approached me. "You know" she said, "your over reaching your stroke and pushing the water down as opposed to pushing it back. You really should start correcting that".
Problem 1 was that I had no idea what "over reaching" even meant. Problem 2 was that I thought my swimming WAS improving. Even if I was only 6 weeks into it.
I climbed out of the pool, thanked her for her advice, walked out into the cold March air, got into my car...and CRIED! Alright I didn't cry, I sobbed. Really hard for about a full minute.
It was a bad moment, one that I am not proud of! I take full responsibility.
Maybe I just needed to let it out. I felt for a moment, really disappointed and somewhat scared. It was this overwhelming feeling that came over me. This thought screaming that maybe I'll never "get" it and maybe this whole triathlon idea is beyond me. Maybe it isn't my destiny.
A line from a Bruce Springsteen song says "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of". That line resonated with me at that very moment.
Later that evening I told Tom about my day...lucky him. He always gets to hear the good stuff. He calmed me down and reminded me that "I'm old" and that learning to swim for the first time at the ripe old age of 46 was going to take time. "Rome wasn't built in a day ya know"!
I had a choice to make; sink or swim. I chose to swim. Sometimes there's no one around to save you so you have to try and save yourself.
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