Thoughts from the Mermaid Diva

I had two workouts yesterday:
In the morning I tested myself for cycling time for 3 miles. I got on our recumbent bike, set it to the hardest setting and frantically pedaled for a total of 12:25 minutes. According to the chart, I'm on the borderline for beginner and fit athlete. Do keep in mind that a real test would be out on the actual road with less hills. Since I was at the hardest setting, I was burning my legs going "up" hills on the recumbent bike. Even if this is not a total apples to apples comparison, it's still a starting point and l'll use the same setting when I test again next month. After burning my legs, I thought...I'm gonna cool down in the pool. YEAH RIGHT! The pool was hotter than me! I was hoping all the clouds we had this past week would help bring the temperature of the pool down, but no. So, I ended up doing a "baby" brick. A brick when you do two types of exercise together, such as cycling and swimming. People who train for triathlons will do bricks throughout the week in training. I plan to do official bricks at the end of August.

Last night, I worked on swimming techniques. Coach Rich was in California last week, so he had not seen me swim for about 1 1/2 weeks. Coach Rich noticed that I'm swimming with the right arm reaching higher than my left arm. I was correcting this form by doing a fingertip drag to make my arm strokes even, which I'll keep working on to get the muscle memory ingrained in my arms. This is definitely something I would not know unless I had a coach! He noticed that I looked more confident with the actual swimming part, but doing the turns is another story! I watched the videos again before swimming. I know what I'm supposed to do and how a turn is to feel, but getting the coordination of timing is not there yet. I still have a lot of work to do. Coach Rich had some encouraging comments on my graceful turns, such as, "...um, was that supposed to be fast?" I love my coach!


Working on the turns last night reminded me of when I spent hours every day with a volleyball beating up the house and barn trying to learn to serve overhand in 9th grade. All my teammates and coaches knew I couldn't serve--it was so embarrassing, frustrating, and I felt like such a weakling. My strength was playing the back row, but I would have sub for serving. I just hated being the only one on the team who could not serve overhand. My hours of daily beatings on the barn FINALLY paid off, towards the end of the volleyball season! I'll never forget the first day in practice I served overhand over the net. Our coach walked by, did a double-take, and said, "was that you Lori???" YES, THAT WAS ME! Our coaches (including the varsity coach) and teammates helped me celebrate my victory at that practice. After that, the coach still had me playing back row, but I got to SERVE in games. I had that serve down (...and still do! :) In fact, I had all perfect serves for those games. I was so proud when I received an award after the season was over for...you guessed it...SERVING!

I WILL CONQUER THE SWIMMING TURN!!! Anyone up for a game of volleyball???