Is That Me Swimming?

Over the summer I started swimming a couple days a week in the pool just outside the front door of my apartment building. Once the pool was closed for the year I realized that I had made some decent improvements in conditioning and actually started to enjoy swimming. When I started, 5 minutes in the pool seemed like an eternity, but I kept at it, and as I got in better shape and learned better technique (self taught from reading articles on the web), I was able to go out to the pool for a 30min workout, which is really a lot of bang for the buck if you don’t want to spend a lot of time exercising.
Once the pool was closed, I then started thinking that I would like to continue swimming, and in Grand Island that leaves one option, which is to join the YMCA. Besides being the only pool in GI, I had also learned about the 5:30AM Master’s Swim, which is nothing unique to GI as Master’s Swim is basically the name for everyone uses for the time slot allotted for adults to do a structured and supervised workout, with instruction as needed.

The idea was great but getting up early is a real problem. I attempted to modify my sleep schedule so I could make it to the early workout. In one month I made it to the YMCA once! Only to discover that the days had been changed due to the HS swim team practice. So I didn’t even get to swim. It was then another month before I made it back again, and the only reason I did that was to just say I made it, I really had given up on the idea of getting up early at this point. Getting there was really an accident, due to increasing my workouts and intensity I found myself super hungry late on a Tuesday night after the indoor cycling ride, so I got home and ate more food. Bad idea to eat so late, so I didn’t sleep well and woke up around 4am, after laying in bed for another hour I decided I just as well get up and go to the Master’s Swim.
I got to the pool and was warmly welcomed and immediately found a new group of friends. In fact the swim was so much fun that the hour was over with before I knew it. I got lots of great instruction and my technique improved immediately. My competitive spirit was also awakened as I was certainly very slow compared to the group and I need some tremendous improvements to my cardio. I would have said my cardio was reasonably decent but when you don’t get to breath when you want to that changes things. Should be excellent for cross training. So after 1 time, I was hooked, and despite the major battle I’m going to face getting to bed earlier (lots earlier) I’m going to commit to going to all 3 practices each week.