Tag Archives: Swimming

Do moms bromance? Is that a thing?

Posted on September 2, 2016 | 3 comments

 

Being an extroverted introvert makes some things difficult.  One of those things that is tricky is busting in on a group of people that are already established.  They have a rhythm and a routine.  I am kind of a big personality (shut up, I know that is an understatement.) And finding my place in a group of personalities that already have a vibe is delicate.  I don’t really know how to take a back seat.  
mom3But the back seat is exactly where you sit when you are the new kid that joins a group of people that regularly share a swim lane.  Treading water next to the lane line while you wait for your spot to grab the wall and try to think of something clever to say in the ten seconds you have before the next swim set starts is exhausting.  Never mind the swimming part.  I always feel like a 12-year-old kid in the back seat of a car.  I can kind of hear the conversation but the windows are down and the infinitely cooler teenage driver and their counterpart in the front seat are smiling and laughing and I am nodding along and treading water and trying to not look clueless.

5:30 a.m. Master’s swim practice is a strange animal. It’s not the retired folks from mid-morning or the work from home people from lunchtime. Both of those groups are happy to chat it up poolside.  These people are getting in and out and getting on with their lives.  They’re busy people or so it seems.  And nobody is particularly chatty when it is still practically the middle of the night.  So how do you get to know them?  How do you find a rapport?

You keep showing up.  Therein lies the problem.  I can think of a zillion reasons not to get up before five in the morning.  Add in a little social anxiety and I can convince myself to bail on practice.  Easy peasy.

But on Wednesday there was this lady that made me laugh.  Hard.  She said “I’m going to make an art film called Sounds From the Pool” as we were all gasping for breath in the cold water.  Later in the practice as the gasping had to turned to heavy breathing I said “If you started the film just with sounds – snapping of the swim cap, gasping and then creepy, heavy breathing – it would totally sound like a dirty movie.  Condoms and then hot and heavy humping…” She didn’t miss a beat, guys.  She immediately grabbed onto my ridiculousness.  She was my people.

This morning I considered sleeping through practice.  But I kinda sorta wanted to see her again.  She was funny.  At 5:30 in the morning.  She’s a rare breed.

mom2I make friends the way drunk girls in bathrooms make friends.  I like to go from “Hi, my name is…” to “OHMYGODYOUAREMYBESTFRIENDEVER” in about four minutes.  It doesn’t always work out well.  I am trying to play it cool.  I am.

But when I saw her this morning and she made me laugh again before I even had my goggles on – well, I was smitten.  While swimming this morning I was thinking about how stressful it must have been to have been a swimmer in high school.  Imagine sharing a lane with someone you are crushing on.  You’d spend the 200 yards you were swimming thinking of something clever to say in the ten seconds you might share at the wall.  And then when you said it there would be a 50% chance that it went unheard.  So if nobody laughs did they not hear you?  Do you try and say it again? Or would you then become that weird girl that repeats herself and thinks she is funny? (Again, shut up.  I know that is self-referential.)

This morning as we were climbing out of the pool and laughing I decided to just go out on a limb and ask “do you stay home with your kids?” There’s a certain camaraderie among people who might not talk to anyone else all day that is not biologically related to them.  Maybe it is a momentary “holyshitwebettermakethiscount” kind of feeling but whatever it is – she had it, I knew it.

We joked about how it is hard to MomFriend someone at swim practice when you only have ten seconds at a time to get your funny on.  I mentioned that I write stand up routines in my head while I swim/bike/run and sadly the only people who ever hear them are my peeps at the grocery store.

“Do you do stand up?” she asked.

And it took everything in my power to not crumble to the floor at her feet on the pool deck.  Only moments earlier she said something to the effect of  “that’s a sleeper that will make me laugh again and again all day” and I could feel myself stand up a little taller.  We’ve only just met.  She thinks I am funny.  That’s my in, y’all.  (Granted, my ten second schpiel on how sprinting breaststroke is like fast walking was pretty damn funny.) I know I get myself into trouble when I dive in prematurely – but I think I am making a new friend.

 

momSo.  Both kids will be back in school next week.  I will once again have that “what do I do now?” feeling.

Maybe I will write some stand up, huh?  Take this show on the road.  And by on the road I mean to the Harris Teeter.

And it’s not like I need to find things to do.  There’s new SnapChat filters on the daily, y’all.

 

 

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Posted in Exercise, Family, Nonsense

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Fear and Swimming in Lake Jordan

Posted on July 21, 2013 | 18 comments

As a child I wondered just how fast I could run if I was being chased by a monster. I believed, as many of us do, that if I was truly terrified I could probably run twice as fast as I normally did. I am sure you have heard stories of heroic efforts put forth by a mother, lifting a car to save her child.  I hope I never find out if I am capable of such feats of strength.  But after this morning I can tell you one thing for certain – I don’t swim very fast when I am petrified.  In fact, panic seems to slow me down quite a bit.

5 am. No coffee yet. Not yet petrified.

5 am. No coffee yet. Not yet petrified.

I left my house a little before six this morning.  Driving to Jordan Lake to participate in my first open water swim competition I was not particularly worried.  I have been swimming more than usual as I attempt to get over a nasty case of tendonitis.  I am a swimmer.  I’ve always been a swimmer.  I was never particularly fast but I swam on the swim team as a kid.  I was a lifeguard well in to my early 20s.  One mile.  36 laps in a 25 yard pool.  The toughest part for me is keeping track of the number of laps.  I am a swimmer.

We lined up on the concrete slab used for boats at Jordan Lake.   I watched the swimmers heading in for the Big Deuce (the two mile swim.) I watched carefully. As far as I could tell it looked like the concrete went down almost to the end of the dock.  I thought I was going to be okay.

I have two fears.  Maybe more than two, but I have only two deep-down-in-my-bones fears.  Mud and strangers touching me.  I can’t recall the source of either fear.  I was never tackled to the ground by an angry mob on a muddy field.  I just don’t like the feeling of mud between my toes.  When teenagers were swinging on rope swings and jumping in and out of creeks I abstained.  No level of freedom made mud between my toes sound like a good idea.  I stopped going in the creek when I stopped being able to keep my jellies on.  And strangers touching me?  That really doesn’t need an explanation, does it?  I’m not big on hugging a casual friend.  So elbow to elbow in an elevator or a crowded mall?  I don’t like it.  I just don’t enjoy the feeling.

The apparent lack of mud at the race’s start was all that was keeping this experience from being a perfect storm.  There was no avoiding the groping that would take place as more than a hundred swimmers take off at once.  And once we were swimming? There was bound to be a few moments when swimmers collided or a stray arm grazed my leg.

Two cups of coffee down. Three hours of sleep. Mildly afraid.

Two cups of coffee down. Three hours of sleep. Mildly afraid.

I was ready for that.  The mud and the strangers.

I was totally and completely ill prepared for the panic, however.  We were treading water at the starting line and counting down.  Three.  Two.  One.  Go!  I put my head down and started to swim.  I had avoided the mud and now I just needed to get past the arms and the hands and the strangers.  I had planned to start slow and easy, conserve my breath.  A stroke and a breath.  Two strokes and a breath and … gasp.  My heart was pounding.  Light brown, murky water.  That was all I could see.  I lifted my head out of the water and looked towards the first buoy.  Face back down in the water.  Stroke and a breath.  Stroke and stroke and a breath and …

Fuck.  This.  That’s what I thought as my feet drifted downward and I began to tread water.  Beneath my goggles I felt my eyes fill with tears and I said out loud “I don’t like this.”  And then I smiled.

Hours in to my labor with Lucy I told my  doula “I don’t like this.”  She laughed and said something to the effect of “It’s a little late to stop.”  I wasn’t going to turn around. I was not going to swim back to the dock.  Lifeguards helping me out of the water asking “Are you ok?” How would I respond?  “Oh, I am fine.  I just… umm… hate this.  It’s … scary.”

I had identified the feeling. I was scared.  Terrified, really.  I hadn’t thought much about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to see anything.  It was like swimming with my eyes closed. Even if I swam painfully slowly I would be finished in under 40 minutes.  My slow and easy mile swim in a pool is about 31 minutes.  Forty minutes max.  I was in labor for hours and hours and I did not like that, either.

I needed a plan.  Ten strokes of freestyle, five breast stroke as a reward.  Fifteen strokes and five more.  Twenty strokes and five strokes of breast stroke.  Twenty five and then thirty.  I never made it past thirty.  At thirty my heart would pound in my chest and I’d be convinced I was going to swim off the side of the planet. And I’d start over again with ten strokes.

And so on and on it went.  I would calm down.  I’d sing songs in my head and count strokes and start to think “There’s another mile swim here in September, I know what to expect now and I think I’d be fine and….” gasp.  The heart pounding fear would be back, like on a roller coaster when you think that there can’t possibly be ANOTHER death drop.

38 minutes.  Well, 38 minutes and 13 seconds but who is counting. 9th in my age group of 16 competitors.  63rd out of 125 swimmers. Looking at the race stats the average time was 38:51.

Petrified and swimming breast stroke at least a third of the way, I held my own.

My heart has stopped racing.  But I haven’t.  I’m signing up for the one mile in September.  I’d do the two mile, but I haven’t totally lost my mind.

There are not enough ways to scare the shit out of ourselves as adults.  As children we get scared frequently.  Sometimes we cry, sometimes we scream.  But 75% of the time we catch our breath and cry out “Let’s do it again!”

And I need a reason to keep swimming.

In the last month I have iced and stretched and yoga’ed.  I have been swimming a lot.  A nasty case of tendonitis and bursitis in my hips has sidelined my running and cycling.  And so I go to yoga and I swim and I walk and I try not to get angry with myself.  Because anger has very little do with healing. But fear might.  Because I feel better tonight than I have in weeks.

Three cups of coffee. One mile swim. Two bagels and a Gatorade.

 

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Posted in Parenting

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Want vs. Need: The Bucket List

Posted on April 24, 2013 | 13 comments

Is it a want or a need? I ask myself this question a hundred times a day. Sometimes it is a slippery slope and I can feel myself justifying before I even get to the answer. Somewhere in between the wants and the needs is a space for the things that we feel we “deserve.”

I want a new pair of jeans. I need to wear something. I deserve to wear a pair of jeans that fit and make me feel good. But none of that answers the question – Do I buy the jeans?

Nine times out of ten I come to the conclusion that I don’t really want or need to buy the object in question. I go around and around in my stay at home mom mind and I decide “Nope. Don’t buy it.” I am fortunate to have a partner that lets me budget our family’s expenses. It makes sense this way. I do the bulk of our spending. Food. Kid stuff. Clothes and whatnot. I have a good handle on what we have in the “Fun Money” pile and I think we do a pretty good job of spreading it around the family. Sometimes just feeling like I could buy the pair of jeans is all I need.

And then I got this fitness bug. I want a gym membership. I need the hour and a half to myself. I deserve this head space and so do my kids. It makes me a better parent. So. Gym membership is a green light. Whether it falls in the want or the need doesn’t matter. It works for us. Embarrassing truth: I spent more on Diet Coke and peanut M&Ms in a month than I spend on a gym membership for the entire family.

And then I picked up what might be the potentially priciest hobby one could choose in the realm of casual athletics. Don’t pick one sport, Kelly. Pick three. Well, all you need to run is shoes. And a better running bra. And the swimming, well, you only need a swim suit. And goggles. And a cap. And you can ride almost any bike if you’re looking to finish not compete. And I was lucky that my mom had a bike I can use. Oh. I need a helmet. I found a triathlon suit online for wicked cheap that is remarkably unflattering which means it must be a good one as they all seem to be more unflattering than the last. I just need sunglasses. And a water bottle. Oh, man, I get heinous chafing when I run in a wet sports bra so just one thing of Body Glide. And maybe a few energy drinks or something. And even if my tri-suit was inexpensive I don’t want to safety pin my number to it so I will need a racebelt. But they are only five bucks.

And that’s it. That is totally all I need. Right? The elastic shoelaces that make my running shoes turn in to slip-ons were a splurge. I admit it. Best six bucks I have spent in a long time.  Still cheaper than a great glass of wine.

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This sprint triathlon training has been riding the fence between want and need since the beginning. Even just signing up for one is spendy. But I feel so good. I am proud of myself. And it has nothing at all to do with my kids. That’s huge.  It’s worth it. What’s that old saying – “Happy wife, happy life.” Hanging in our laundry room when I was a kid was a little plaque “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Mama is happy. This is good. It is like the trickle down economics of “Fun Money” spending.

I’ve blown about a hundred bucks in the last fifteen weeks. That is in addition to the hundred bucks my mom slid in to my back pocket the last time I was at home.  I promised her I’d not spend it on groceries.  Two running tops, a sports bra, six pairs of socks, a new cap, a water bottle, a headband and a pair of sunglasses later I took this picture for her.  “Done. You spoil me,” I wrote in the text. I comparison shopped and considered different options for weeks before I almost let that hundred dollar bill burn a hole through my wallet.

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It’s Thursday.  Three more days and it is “Race Day.”  I have worked hard. I am really excited.  I have read a million blogs.  I have looked at a million lists of Tips for Tri-Newbies.  Tie a balloon to the bike rack so you can find your bike.  Don’t think so much about what you look like.  No one is watching you.  Don’t get upset when the 80-year-old woman on the mountain bike passes you. Pass on the left.  Don’t litter.  Put your stuff in a bucket.  Set up your transition area on a towel and use your bucket to sit on while you put your shoes on.

A bucket.  You can get a 5 gallon bucket at Home Depot for three bucks.  I could let Em decorate it with a Sharpie.  “Go MOM! You can do it!”  It made me smile to think about it.  But I have a bucket in the shed.   I don’t need a new bucket.  I just don’t.  Not when I have this one.

I’ll be the girl with the hot pink shoe laces and the paint covered Sherwin Williams bucket and the tears running down her face.  Wish me luck.

The Bucket

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I’ve been called a lot of names in my day…

Posted on July 11, 2011 | 4 comments

The first time I can remember it happening it was the spring of 2006.  I was in line at Food Lion.  Em was at home with Jeremy.  It was a Sunday.  It was not quite noon.

I had food in my cart.  And a bottle of wine.  Not a magnum, just a bottle.  And diapers.  In front of me in line was the kind of half naked boy you only see in underwear ads and at the beach. His hip bones could have cut glass and he was young enough to have no visible hair anywhere on his upper body and umm… lower torso.    In his cart was case upon case of Bud Light.  Not four or five cases.  But cases, stacked high and on the bottom, too.

“You can go ahead, m’aam.”  He motioned for me to get ahead of him in line.  This was not out of courtesy.  You can’t buy a six pack of beer on a Sunday in North Carolina before noon, much less a dozen cases.

“That’s okay,” I smiled.  And held up my measly bottle of pinot.

Silence.

I smiled again  “Good work.  You don’t mess around.”

“No, ma’am.”

That was twice.  Two ma’ams.  And not a single “We’ll be at Martin Street all day, stop by.”

It happened.  Even without a kid on my hip.  I was in the “ma’am zone.”

It stung at the time.  I was 29 years old.

This weekend we were all at the pool.  (Summer of 2011 if you’re paying attention to the time line.  I am 35 and pregnant.)   We were at the pool, the pool we were really excited to join for several reasons, not the least of which was their incredible water slide.  Em has always  been committed to her “swimming lessons.”  She has been fearless from the start and has enjoyed the process of learning.  As a former lifeguard and swimming teacher I have loved teaching her.

She has BIG feelings so her successes have been legendary and her failures tragic.  Upon finding out that she had to pass a swim test in order to go down the water slide at our new pool, she was not discouraged.

I was reminded of my first time trials.  The first year of swim team as  a Fairfax Station Flyer, 1983.    The story goes that I dove right in for my Butterfly 25 meters, unaware and seemingly unconcerned that I could not actually swim Butterfly, only to be pulled out by a lifeguard shortly thereafter.

She was confident with each trip to the pool that “TODAY I will pass that swim test, Mom.”   There were hurdles.  Occasionally the “water stings [her] eyes like FIRE.”  One day it was too crowded to practice in the fashion she was used to and she declared that day at the pool to be a “waste of [her] TIME.”

Saturday we went to the pool with her buddy.  A friend she has had since she was three months old.  A friend with whom she is perhaps slightly competitive.  His swimming skills have really blossomed this summer and she was somewhere short of congratulatory.  Seeing him swim across the pool she fell to pieces.  “He will pass the swim test and just go down the slide ALL day and leave me all ALONE!”  Needless to say, no swim tests were taken and all crisis was averted.  But it provides a background for the conviction she had on Sunday when we arrived at the pool.

“I’m gonna pass that swim test today, Mom.”  And so, we practiced.  As we always do.  And damn, if she didn’t swim her little ass across that pool within the first half an hour.  I told her to go get a lifeguard and she marched her little self right over to their desk.  Whenever I fill out a form  and write my name in the PARENT: ____ line it gives me a giggle.

I followed the lifeguard over to the special lap lane designated for swim tests.  I tried to think of a way to say “So, I was a lifeguard when I was your age” that didn’t make me sound like an old lady.  Nothing came to me. I remained silent.  I tried not to compare her tan 17 year old self to my SPF 50 wearing pregnant body.

Em wavered only momentarily.  After a quick trip to the ladies room she returned with a look in her eye I’d not ever seen.  “Are you ready, baby girl?”  I expected her to roll her eyes at the “baby girl” or cling to my leg one last time and say “Not yet.”  She smiled her zillion dollar smile and leapt.

And she swam.  MQD took a video.  I walked along the edge of the pool saying “You’re at the first set of flags.  You are doing AWESOME!   You’ll be there in only six more breaths!”  Em measures swimming distances in the number of times she has to breathe.

And she made it.  Her little self climbed out of the pool and she took off her red wristband, indicating she was a non-swimmer, and traded it for a yellow.  We high-fived and I hugged her.  Em took off for the water slide. I walked away from the lifeguard with the perfect body and suddenly didn’t seem so bothered by her.

“Can you write your daughter’s name here, ma’am?” she called after me, handing me back the clipboard.

And Ma’am was proud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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