10 Things

10 things I’ve figured out since I re-started learning to swim:

1. Goggles are very important.
2. Ear plugs are important, but not as important as goggles.
3. A nose plug is not important and actually quite annoying.
4. A swim cap is also not important but still very cool.
5. Swimming with your mouth closed (the entire time) is hard and stupid.
6. Lifting your whole head out of the water to breathe is not recommended.
7. Breathing with a right side head turn is hard but with the left side it’s easy.
8. Kicking should be continuous and not once every swim stroke.
9. Kick turns are cool but physically (and genetically) impossible for me to do.
10. My shoulders, neck and upper back hate me for trying this.

Oh, and I still have no fucking idea what I’m doing.

New Bedford Half Marathon

At the start of the year, The New Bedford Half Marathon was to be my “Goal Race” for the Spring of 2012. I geared my early season training plan around it in order to peak for the March 18th race date and hopefully run a new Half Marathon PR. And, while my training did go pretty well for the first 2+ months of the year, I realized after the 10 miler that a HM PR (1:23:06 or better) was a little bit beyond my reach at the moment. So, going into the race, my "new" plan was to put in a good, hard effort and just have fun with it.

As usual, the start at New Bedford was crazy. It took me a while just to worm my way up through the tightly packed corral area to a place where I thought I should be, pre-start. The temps were near ideal – Sunny, 45 degrees and almost no wind. Of course, we were standing amongst the taller buildings in downtown New Bedford, so any wind was bound to be somewhat minimized. That was not to be the case, as it turned out, down by Clark’s Cove and New Bedford Harbor. But, more on that later …

Square One

Recently I decided that it would be a good idea to expand my cross training world to include swimming. Lord knows why. I waste enough of my time exercising, really, without including time driving to an aquatic facility, flopping around in a pool for a while, then driving home. And then, probably catching a cold from going outside with wet hair.

Anyway, that “X-T World Expansion” began this past Monday evening at the Nashua YMCA. I signed up to participate in a Tri-Swim class (or in my case - Try Swim) to help me learn proper swimming technique. The class is taught by a burly guy named John, who clearly has no idea what he’s in for with regards to teaching me how to swim.