FRICKIN FRAK.
(this is a family blog)
Well, where to start.
I hate to swim.
I wanted to be positive about it, you know? I don't care for it. I'm not good at it and I don't care for it. Sometimes it downright gives me the willies. But no, actually, it sucks. I'm addicted to air, and I want it when I want it, not when I'm next supposed to be able to have it, if a wave doesn't go crashing over my head.
So I had a little incident. A little drowny-type thing as a kid in my uncle's swimming pool. Not that serious. My dad was there to pull me out. (thanks dad) The thing that bothered me about it was that you're supposed to be able to just... swim. Everybody says so. That's why you hurl your loved ones into the nearest freestanding pool or river, and can do the same thing with a dog, no? Instinct just kicks in. I remember a lot of flailing. And sinking.
Fast-forward to swimming lessons. Still not too comfortable but making progress. It gets to be evaluation day. I dunno. Not too far along, but not the first course, either. And what happens. The elastic on my trunks snaps. But I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone, so I complete the evaluations -- including a dive -- with one hand at my waist, to hold my shorts up. FAIL.
A little further along. Grade 4. I'm not crazy about pools by this point, and having not developed ability, have not developed confidence. But we take a school trip to the Pan Am pool. Kind of exciting. Cold, large, but exciting. Then my teacher -- notoriously unfriendly woman to put it mildly, stabs me in the eye with one of her gigantic fingernails as I'm swimming along. Gah! I don't know what freaked me out more: that I thought I may have lost an eye, or that my teacher was suddenly being incredibly nice to me. So I develop a paranoia about being underwater in public swimming pools, where in the state of your muffled hearing, you can never tell if someone is about to, say, dive on top of you and snap your spine like a twig, or perhaps stab you in the eye, blinding you for life.
Fast-forward to about 7 years ago. I'm in Asia for a year, just backpacking around and taking stock. Haven't done a lot of swimming so little ability, little confidence. Same old story. But I'm in excellent shape and I make a decent go of it. HUGE frickin hurricane hits. I mean gigantic. I actually snap pictures of a waterspout but turns out the camera I bought in Bangkok was a complete bust. Anyway. Huge frickin storm. Goes on and on. Our beach can only be reached by small boat. Supplies run short. Then one morning, daylight. The waves are brown with debris, but things are looking up. Fantastic! So a bunch of us go trekking to the other side of the island where there are "huge waves, I mean really immense". Only post-storm, they weren't huge. They were gigantic. Oh yeah, and it wasn't post-storm, turns out. We were in the eye, but didn't know it. So it screwed up the waves and currents beyond recognition from the beach. Riptide almost takes two of my friends away, then catches me. Completely done for. No idea how I pulled through. Well some idea, but that's another story. Shaken, not stirred, to say the least.
Still, just two weeks later I'm due to take my first SCUBA course, so I have to get back in the water and get comfortable again. That day. No time to think about it. Don't think about it. Do not think about it.
So here I am today. I like to run. Running is good. You can breathe all you want; the cement never conspires to suck you under to some final, dark place of suffocation. Nope. Happy, tiring fun. But I've always wanted to do triathlons, so...
I'm taking swimming lessons again. And if my elastic breaks, I think I'll tell my instructor. And I'll say it again: swimming fricking sucks. Laps suck. Sticking your head underwater sucks. I can do backstroke forever and ever, but front crawl, erg. And don't even get me started on breast stroke. But slowly it's beginning to come together. Things got chaotic in the pool the other day with another class suddenly crashing into my lane while I was swimming along, and I got that nasty vulnerable feeling again, unable to suss what was going on underwater. But mostly good. We did search and rescue surface dive patterns yesterday, and retrieving things off the bottom of the pool, and that was fun. Of course, this is all in a pool. The swimming portion of triathlons are done in lakes and rivers. Different kind of fun.
So today after work I hit the gym. 5 minutes on treadmill; full weights workout, really hard. Then half an hour on the elliptical till I could feel a tendon start to tick, then onto the bike. What the heck, I figure. The upcoming sprint triathlon has a 20km bike portion. I'll do that. Not expecting much. It's just twiddling your feet in circles, isn't it? Well holy hell. I struggled to get it done in 40 minutes, and it ate me right up. This thing is gonna be harder than I thought.
So it's Friday again and I have a special treat. The best Muppet footage ever. Enjoy.
Well, where to start.
I hate to swim.
I wanted to be positive about it, you know? I don't care for it. I'm not good at it and I don't care for it. Sometimes it downright gives me the willies. But no, actually, it sucks. I'm addicted to air, and I want it when I want it, not when I'm next supposed to be able to have it, if a wave doesn't go crashing over my head.
So I had a little incident. A little drowny-type thing as a kid in my uncle's swimming pool. Not that serious. My dad was there to pull me out. (thanks dad) The thing that bothered me about it was that you're supposed to be able to just... swim. Everybody says so. That's why you hurl your loved ones into the nearest freestanding pool or river, and can do the same thing with a dog, no? Instinct just kicks in. I remember a lot of flailing. And sinking.
Fast-forward to swimming lessons. Still not too comfortable but making progress. It gets to be evaluation day. I dunno. Not too far along, but not the first course, either. And what happens. The elastic on my trunks snaps. But I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone, so I complete the evaluations -- including a dive -- with one hand at my waist, to hold my shorts up. FAIL.
A little further along. Grade 4. I'm not crazy about pools by this point, and having not developed ability, have not developed confidence. But we take a school trip to the Pan Am pool. Kind of exciting. Cold, large, but exciting. Then my teacher -- notoriously unfriendly woman to put it mildly, stabs me in the eye with one of her gigantic fingernails as I'm swimming along. Gah! I don't know what freaked me out more: that I thought I may have lost an eye, or that my teacher was suddenly being incredibly nice to me. So I develop a paranoia about being underwater in public swimming pools, where in the state of your muffled hearing, you can never tell if someone is about to, say, dive on top of you and snap your spine like a twig, or perhaps stab you in the eye, blinding you for life.
Fast-forward to about 7 years ago. I'm in Asia for a year, just backpacking around and taking stock. Haven't done a lot of swimming so little ability, little confidence. Same old story. But I'm in excellent shape and I make a decent go of it. HUGE frickin hurricane hits. I mean gigantic. I actually snap pictures of a waterspout but turns out the camera I bought in Bangkok was a complete bust. Anyway. Huge frickin storm. Goes on and on. Our beach can only be reached by small boat. Supplies run short. Then one morning, daylight. The waves are brown with debris, but things are looking up. Fantastic! So a bunch of us go trekking to the other side of the island where there are "huge waves, I mean really immense". Only post-storm, they weren't huge. They were gigantic. Oh yeah, and it wasn't post-storm, turns out. We were in the eye, but didn't know it. So it screwed up the waves and currents beyond recognition from the beach. Riptide almost takes two of my friends away, then catches me. Completely done for. No idea how I pulled through. Well some idea, but that's another story. Shaken, not stirred, to say the least.
Still, just two weeks later I'm due to take my first SCUBA course, so I have to get back in the water and get comfortable again. That day. No time to think about it. Don't think about it. Do not think about it.
So here I am today. I like to run. Running is good. You can breathe all you want; the cement never conspires to suck you under to some final, dark place of suffocation. Nope. Happy, tiring fun. But I've always wanted to do triathlons, so...
I'm taking swimming lessons again. And if my elastic breaks, I think I'll tell my instructor. And I'll say it again: swimming fricking sucks. Laps suck. Sticking your head underwater sucks. I can do backstroke forever and ever, but front crawl, erg. And don't even get me started on breast stroke. But slowly it's beginning to come together. Things got chaotic in the pool the other day with another class suddenly crashing into my lane while I was swimming along, and I got that nasty vulnerable feeling again, unable to suss what was going on underwater. But mostly good. We did search and rescue surface dive patterns yesterday, and retrieving things off the bottom of the pool, and that was fun. Of course, this is all in a pool. The swimming portion of triathlons are done in lakes and rivers. Different kind of fun.
So today after work I hit the gym. 5 minutes on treadmill; full weights workout, really hard. Then half an hour on the elliptical till I could feel a tendon start to tick, then onto the bike. What the heck, I figure. The upcoming sprint triathlon has a 20km bike portion. I'll do that. Not expecting much. It's just twiddling your feet in circles, isn't it? Well holy hell. I struggled to get it done in 40 minutes, and it ate me right up. This thing is gonna be harder than I thought.
So it's Friday again and I have a special treat. The best Muppet footage ever. Enjoy.
posted by Freemount at 9:34 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home