Taking Off the Training Wheels

Today was the 3K/5K continuous swim. I was scheduled to swim the 3K distance. I had done this distance a month ago. However, I swam the entire distance with a pull buoy. Today, I was instructed to swim the distance without the pull buoy. In other words, the training wheels were coming off.

We were instructed to meet a little before 6:00 am at Carmody Recreation Center. Steve had arranged for the pool to open early for us so that we could do the swim with a 50 meter setup. For me, this meant at least a 5:00 am wake up. This was tough as Brenda and I had gone to a holiday party Saturday night and did get back to her place until 11:00 pm. Ugh.

I was doing okay time wise until I hit a snag leaving. My car was parked in Brenda's garage, which is a detached garage. When I got to it, the garage door was locked, and I had no key. Even worse, her house was locked so I couldn't immediately get back in to get a key. I tried knocking on the door for Brenda to let me in, but she was still sleeping.

I resorted to finding the house key that she keeps in a lock box. Although I found it, I then had a new set of problems; it was so dark that I could not see the numbers on it. After fumbling around for what seemed like forever, I finally opened the lock box. I got back into the house. Brenda gave me the key to the garage, and I was off. However, I was now running late based on how long Mapquest said it would take to drive to Carmody Recreation Center. I only hoped that I would not get lost on the way there.

I arrived just at 6:00 am. I was glad to see everyone was still in their cars. We entered the pool through the back door to the recreation center and got ready to swim. The lanes were divided into 3K and 5K lanes. I picked the slowest 3K lane and started to swim.

The swim itself was not too exciting. It just seemed to be an endless going back and forth in the lane. I got passed more than once during the swim by Barry and Max. I tried to keep track of how many times I was passed by each of them so that I could double check my distance when they finished.

My goals were modest: complete the swim and finish my 3K swim before Steve finished his 5K swim. When I finished, I was happy to see that Steve was still swimming. I got him by about 4 minutes. This just shows how slow I am in the pool; Steve almost finished his 5K before I finished my 3K. I try to keep this in perspective, however. Last year at this time, I could barely swim 50 yards, and I was worried about completing 500 yards in a pool swim triathlon. Now, I am swimming 3000 meters continuously and could have kept on swimming. If you had told me a year ago that I would swim 3000 continuous meters, I would have told you are crazy.

I'm glad that this swim is done. It was one of those workouts that concerned me when I saw it on my training schedule. I am sure that this will not be the last time that it is written into the schedule but now I know I can do it. It is a great feeling to complete something that you are not sure you can do.