Swimming workout- 800meters

Wednesday, Jan. 5th

This was a NIGHTMARE!!!

First off, I spent the majority of the day Monday, Jan. 3rd looking for a 50 meter pool, but I couldn't find one.  I didn't want to use the 25 meter pool that they have at 24-Hour Fitness, the YMCA etc. because I would have to do 32 laps to reach 800 meters, AND I thought that swimming 25 meters would be too easy.  I don't know what the hell I was thinking...

I get to 24-Hour Fitness to use their pool and they assured me that the water was about 80 degress... BULLSHIT!  That water was cold as hell... I wanted to turn around and leave to be honest!  But I'm "Terry" so obvious I'm not going to let that discourage me.  I get it and get use to the temperature and then I tell myself "Let's go!". 

Just so that you know, I CAN swim, but it's usually for fun, not for distance.  The farthest that I ever swam was out to a buoy and back when I went to Jamaica years ago.  From the beach, the buoy looked like it was far way, but it also looked like it was stationary.  I figured I could swim out to it, hold onto it and rest a little while, then swim back.  So I swam out there and grabbed onto it... and it started MOVING!!  That damn thing WASN'T STATIONARY AT ALL!!!!  I wasted alot of energy trying to hold onto it, so I decided to just swim back, but I didn't have enough energy to get to the beach, towards the end!  I thought I was going to get some super human "fight or flight" adrenaline to help me out (like on T.V and in the movies), but that shit didn't happen for me, SO.... I thought I was going to drown, but I kept trying to swim.  My girlfriend at the time who was chillin' on the beach saw me struggling and swam out there to save me!  Irony is, but the time she got to me, I was still pretty far from from the beach, but I had swam far enough to just stand up!!  WOW!!  Yeah... true story.

Anyways, that experience is what made me think that I could swim a relatively long distance with no problem.  But at 24-Hour Fitness, I had alot of problems:

1)  I'm use to swimming with my head ABOVE water so that I can breathe!  Triathletes need to swim with their faces BELOW water and then turn their head to the side every now-and-then while they're swimming to breathe
2)  I have NO experience doing that kind of breathing
3)  I tried to swim 25 meters with my face in the water, but not breathing... couldn't do it
4)  I tried to swim 25 meters with my face in the water, but breathing like a triathlete... couldn't do it
5)  Tried an exercise that my coach told me to do where you use both hand to hold onto a kick board and then just kick your legs to propel you from one side of the pool to the other.... couldn't do it

By now you see the trend... I failed at EVERYTHING that I had tried to do!  Swim 800 meters... bullshit!  I can't even swim 25!  Sad but true.  So after all those failures, I told myself "Dammit, I'm going to stay here for a SOLID hour and try to work this out... Instead of my goal being to swim 800 meters, today my goal is to swim 25 meters, with triathlete style breathing, NONSTOP... more than once".   So I kept trying and trying and trying.... then, I swam the length of the pool (25 meters) with breathing and without stopping!!! FINALLY!!!  Then I did it again... and again... and again... In total, I think I did it 5 or 6 times, but not in a row..  I had failures mixed in-between the good ones.  The best thing that happened was, I accidentally raced this guy in the lane next to me, and I beat him!!!  BARELY... but still.  It made me feel good.

Overall, that workout was not fun AT ALL!