The swim: my third best leg

I like to say the swim is my third best leg. It’s not my worst leg; it’s just the one that I’m the least good at. It’s probably because I picked it up so late in life. I look around at other people swimming and I’m jealous at how easy and effortless they make it look. For me swimming is such a painstaking labor… I don’t dislike it but I just don’t really love it.

Growing up poor in Chicago we didn’t really have access to swimming pools so I didn’t get to spend too much time in the water. I actually had a couple near drowning experiences throughout my childhood that made me pretty fearful of water. As I got older I spent more time in the pool but I mostly hung out in the shallow end and tried not to venture too far out.

When I signed up for the Chicago Blue Dolphins I had to start out with the most basic lessons. It took me that whole summer to feel comfortable with swimming a mile in open water and I won’t even lie and pretend like I didn’t have to hold on to many lifeguard’s boats at the Chicago Triathlon that year. After my initial round of private lessons with the Blue Dolphins I kept swimming with them during their group sessions but I just recently canceled my membership this year. With the whole school thing I knew I wouldn’t have time to make the sessions and I would have to start swimming on my own. So far it’s not going so great… I haven’t been in the pool since my last race of the season, the Great Illini Half Ironman, which was in early September (9/5/2009). Yikes! I gotta get back into it soon… but again, it’s such a painstaking labor for me that it’s hard to really get motivated on my own to go for a swim.

Maybe I dislike the swim because I’m not very good at it. So if I were a good swimmer I would really like it. This just seems like such a vicious circle… I dislike the swim because I’m not good at it, which makes me not want to go and do swim training, which keeps me from getting good at it, which keeps me from liking it, because I’m not good at it, which makes me not want to do it…