Reluctant Fish

We have a brand new aquatic center a few miles from our house. It opened on January 5th. It is beautiful. A separate pool for the kids, swim lessons, scuba, aqua-aerobics etc. Ten (maybe 12?) wide lanes solely for lap swimming. And my pass from the community center is valid there - sweet! Yet...today is the first day I've been able to make myself go get in the pool. It's been cold; I haven't had a swim specifically in my plan; I didn't want to go alone, blah, blah, another lame excuse, blah. This afternoon my need for a workout that wouldn't make my legs any more sore outweighed my aversion to putting on a bathing suit. I went. Alone. In the cold. I had to wait for a lane. I thought about bagging it.

I am so glad I didn't! I needed the quiet and the solitude. I needed the stretching and the pulling that is swimming. I needed the confidence from doing something new and on my own. I needed to learn if I could follow instructions like "DESCEND" on the training plan. Guess what? I can! My 4x100 DESCEND looked like this: 1:50, 1:47, 1:43, 1:42. Yay!! It was a short workout - only 1000 yards - so aside from a few drills and the warm up, cool down - the descending 100's were pretty much it. But still! Something new and faster than my usual steady swim of 2 minute hundreds. Maybe the push ups are helping after all? Maybe I knew there wasn't much else to the workout so it was easier to focus on getting those exactly right? Maybe I was just so glad to be back in the water again? Whatever the contributing factors - I'm grateful for a good swim!