Masters Swimming saga
This is pretty much what everyone else at my Masters Swimming class looks like. The muscles and bodies of these people are amazing, the women included. I am in awe. Definitely gives me more motivation to lose that 9 pounds!

So here's the story of my masters swimming experiences this week. What is difficult will only make me stronger, this is my mantra as of late. It all started when I woke up Monday morning and realized that my cat Dorrie decided to eat my swim goggles on Sunday night (she retrieved them from INSIDE of my workout bag and proceeded to chew through the strap - BAD KITTY!!!) so Masters Swimming was out for Monday morning. I decided to go on Tuesday instead which is a swim workout geared specifically to triathletes. I figured, oh good, there might be some other beginner triathletes that will be there tht I can swim with. UM NOPE! I was the only one in the beginner lane that morning. Ugh. And that happened to be the morning that the coach wrote up the workout and it was completely undecipherable. All the other masters classes I had been to had been understandable b/c I had people in my lane to ask (what the heck is an IM? What does it mean 400 IM swim, drill, kick, swim, how do I kick from the other side of the pool when I don't have a kickboard, etc. etc.) So given all I had learned in my other non-triathlete based masters sessions I thought I'd be okay at the triathlete one (that just means all freestyle, no IMs and fly and all thadt craziness). Everyone else had their paddles and pull buoys going and they were swimming away, no one else was hanging onto the wall (for dear life in my case) just staring at the board trying to make sense of all the numbers and the labels. The coach was nowhere to be found. And he is intimidating as hell anyway so I didn't really want to ask all that much. He only talks to the fast swimmers, correcting their strokes and telling them to rest or not to rest and what to try. So I do a lot of laps of freestyle and then he comes back and erases one of the boards (the one that I thought we were supposed to use). I looked at the other board and start to understand it and then finally I get into the workout. I seriously thought about just getting out of the pool and leaving, I was so discouraged, everyone else had a bunch of people in their lanes so I guess I just felt lonely and neglected. Though wasn't that the whole reason I left the Y? I wanted to be with more serious swimmers and not have to deal with kids standing in my lane, the lane randomly closing, etc. etc. So I decided to suck it up and finish the workout. I'm glad I did. All this stuff just makes me stronger, RIGHT??

I went again this morning to a normal masters and my usual lane buddies were back which I was very thankful for. They lap me once every 5 laps which also gets VERY discouraging (as I'm completely gasping for breath and holding onto the wall and they finish the set just sort of out of breath) but at least they were there. And they were nice to me. But then I looked over to the next lane over and realized that is the next step after the beginner lane and I noticed that every single swimmer in that lane was doing the fly. Which means if I EVER want to move up I am going to have to learn how to do the fly! And do it FAST!!!