This was the second week of my “zero to swim a mile” plan.  It went much better than last week.  I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t steal an extra breath here or there, but overall it went pretty close to the plan.  One of the main issues I had was turning my brain off.  I find that I over think things, especially when swimming.  I’m busy trying to find the perfect number of strokes between breaths, trying to make sure I only have one goggle out when taking breaths and trying to keep an eye on my watch to make sure I get the yardage right.  One of the biggest things on my mind this week was that next week, I have to do double the yardage before I get a break.

This week I was scheduled to do the 200 yards before taking 12 breaths.  Next week I will have to do 400 yards before taking the 12 breaths.  I struggle with telling myself I can do things if I haven’t already done them.  That’s part of what this whole journey is about.  Making myself believe in, well, myself.  I’m getting there, but it takes time.  After I finished one of my sets, I decided to do an additional 300 yards straight.  This would help convince my brain that if I can do 300 tired, I can do 400 fresh next week.  It worked out well.  I was exhausted, but I did it.  I felt like I’d be good going into next week.

The pool had signs posted that it would be configured into 50 yard lanes Friday and Saturday.  In the lap pool, they can either configure it long ways or the short way.  It’s almost always the short way as that yields more lanes for swimmers.  The last time it was set up for 50’s I hadn’t been swimming much and it was very intimidating.  I got in and I swear the pool extended itself before my very eyes.  I was curious to see how it would go this time.  It’s tricky to turn around at the wall.  I certainly can’t do those fancy flip turns that the swimmers do.  It’s getting smoother but still nowhere near graceful, so this time, I was actually looking forward to it being set up the long way and having fewer turns.

Friday I left work looking forward to getting over to the pool to swim the 50’s.  The one thing I had not given much thought to, was that the set up would cut the number of lanes in half.  When I got there it became clear that I was not going to swim that night.  The lanes had at least 5 people in each.  There were arms and legs flying all over the place and coaches shouting at their students.  Both sets of classes took up every bit of space and I sure as heck wasn’t squeezing myself in between the preteens.  Oh well.

Saturday we headed over to the beach for some more open water swim practice.  I always have a hard time with the beach.  I have these high hopes that something’s going to click and I’m just going to dive in and start swimming.  Maybe I’d see a sting ray and not freak out, then some dolphins would swim up and  offer me a ride to the finish line.  Ok, maybe not like that but I am always hopeful.  At the same time, I am dreading it, knowing that it probably won’t go like my vision of grandeur.  This time was no different.  I was hopeful but nervous.

It went just about as expected.  Nowhere near my hopes but not quite bad enough to crush my dreams.  I had watched some videos of the race start last year to try to get an idea of how far out I would need to swim before turning and swimming parallel to the shoreline.  I decided I would practice getting into the water and heading straight out.  It didn’t go very well.  I spent a lot of energy and really didn’t get anywhere.  At one point, I turned the wrong way to breathe and gobbled up a bunch of salt water.

I finally made it out to where I thought I was close to where the turn might be.  Again, I was hopeful that I would turn and just start swimming the shoreline.  I even assumed I could crank out a few hundred yards.  After all, I do that in the pool, so why not in the ocean?  I guess there are a million reasons why not, because it didn’t happen.  I just kept swimming straight out and straight back to the shore line.  I’m really good at the part of getting back to the shore line and I have plenty of skill in getting the wetsuit off for transition.  After a few rounds of this, I decided I had enough for the day and we headed home.

Sunday we headed back out to the beach.  When we got there, we realized that the A1A marathon was taking place and almost thought we weren’t going to be able to park.  A little part of me was kind of hoping that was the case, but we found a parking spot and I got suited up.  It’s always a little awkward to hit the beach in the wetsuit when surrounded by a bunch of beach goers in tiny swim suits.  I get all sorts of looks, but I am getting used to it.  The water was really beautiful and fairly calm.  My plan was to walk away from the family about 100 yards, swim straight out, across the hundred and back in to them.

I headed out and hoped to just turn, but I ended up pausing a moment.  I remembered hearing that counting strokes gets people’s minds off the distance and thought I would give that a try.  Yeah, that did not work so well for me.  It made me feel really tired to get to 100 strokes.  Then, my brain started doing the math.  If it takes me about twenty something to do 25 yards in the pool, then that would be about 100 yards.  It was not helping me get lost in thought, it was driving my brain crazy and telling my body I should be tired by now.  I changed strategies.

I began practicing swimming straight out and back again, trying to find what depth I was most comfortable with starting to go from standing to swimming so that on race day, I would know what to do.  I got pretty far out and just stopped.  I wanted to practice handling situations that could occur.  I hear horror stories of people whose goggles get kicked off and they just can’t get them back on.  Or the person that gets swum over and pushed under the water and has to come back up gasping for air.  I played with getting my goggles partially off and back on.  Figuring out if I was better off laying flat with  my back to the waves, or facing the waves, etc.  That went ok, and I now have a plan if any of those things goes wrong on race day.

At one point, when I was experimenting with these possible challenges, I just floated there.  I really took in how balanced I could be in the wet suit.  It was very challenging at first, to just “be” there.  I told myself that I would remain there until I was completely calm.  Being where I know I could not reach the bottom and being able to become calm was big for me.  I was really pleased and had a moment where I felt like I could actually achieve this.  I may take a lot longer than most, but I am feeling better about my chances.  I went out a little deeper and saw the beginnings of the reef area, close to the buoy that divides the swimmer space and the boater space.  I saw a jelly fish and kinda made my way the other direction.  I saw a sting ray, and I didn’t freak out.  I took a moment to be grateful and to take it all in.  The dolphins never showed up, so I had to swim back to shore on my own – go figure.