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I think it’s a good thing that I have deep stores of “Red Headed Determination” because this is the step in the process where otherwise, I’d step off the train.

Yesterday I began the swim portion of training for the sprint-triathlon I hope to complete. I’ve been averaging a 5 mile run/walk with a 13 mile bike ride and recently added strength training once a week as well. The heat was causing me to wheeze so I’m super grateful for our discounted Y membership with it’s gym and pool access. I won’t be choosing a race in the heat of a Florida summer, for sure, and likely will avoid those with an ocean swim all together. We’ll see though. The ocean would provide less by-stander visibility and looking-obnoxious-whilst-swimming is a definite fear.

Most of the races I’ve looked at incorporate a 400 yard swim. In our pool that is 16 laps. I did have a few factors working against me yesterday:

• a hard morning work out, where I’d pushed my legs especially hard, having newly discovered this cool weight machine that targets what I call “handle bar butt”
• a swimsuit that is too big, with shorts that were chosen for mountain hikes near streams, not lap swimming. I’m also about 3-4 sizes smaller now than when I bought it and the thing sort of drapes. Not great for streamlined, fish-like movement!
• Heat of the day, on the weakest day of my month, with Day 8 of an ongoing migraine

But still, my swimming is embarrassing. My strokes are sloppy and I couldn’t do two laps in a row with the same stroke. I was gasping at each touch of the wall and by lap 7 (I only made it 8!) thought stopping mid-lap and sinking quietly to the bottom sounded like a fine option! Only the side-stroke got me across without feeling like I was dying and I think this is part because I don’t have to wonder how I’m going to breathe with that particular stroke, nor do I create wavy lines down the lane with my wonky back stroke.

It feels vulnerable and obvious out there! No one else was swimming laps so the only others there were the lifeguards, cockily sitting perched just above my lane, and the pre-teen boys yelling “marco!” and “polo” over in the shallow section. My old mantra of “I just want to finish the race” was drowned before my eyes when I instead got a glimpse of my super-white, “had 5 babies” body as the LAST one struggling across the pool in this absurd goal of finishing a freakin’ TRIATHLON. What the heck was I thinking in setting this goal in the first place?

My “most embarrassing swimming story” goes like this: the last time I was in a lap pool was in 2002, when little Wheaton was taking his first batch of swimming lessons. We were at a college pool and there were several competitive swim teams who also used the pool for practices. I was swimming along at my typical “snail’s pace” and these kids were in the next lane. I envied their endurance, their in-sync breathing, their perfect stroke. I did NOT envy their dictator of a coach. But that afternoon I heard him screaming at a group of girls, “Clean it up! You can swim better than that! Don’t you ever let me see you swim like HER!” And yes folks, he was pointing at my pathetic, panting, self. I wanted to drop to the concrete bottom right then and there.

I’ve got lots of voices to reprogram in my head and not all of them belong to a manipulative and controlling ex-husband. Some of them are from guys like that swim coach, who kept me from a public swim for 6 years. I’ve got to learn how to swim better, to care less about how it looks, and complete the goal. But oh how humbling it is to realize how far I am from achievement, how unrefined it will probably look right on through the race, and how much vanity there will be swallow in order to cross the finish line.

After my swim practice I worked with Rowan, who is just learning to swim. I hold his little hands and we kick across the shallow end to grab the wall and we just repeat it over and over until he’s tired out. At every touch of the side he yells, “YAY Mom! I did it! I’m awesome!” I’d love just a touch of that unabashed self-love and enthusiasm. Out of the mouths of babes.

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