Drowning Burgers

Well, I said I’d haul my ass out swimming tonight.  And I did.  I hauled a pair of home BBQ’d burgers through a full km in the pool.  There were certainly moments when I thought the burgers were going to revolt and demand out, but we managed to get through it without incident.

I was talking this week with a friend of mine who I used to swim a lot with back in high school.  He suggested that part of the difficulty I had last time I swam was due to a lack of shoulder strength.  Today’s swim, all I could think about was how right he was.  As I plowed through the water, laborious stroke after laborious stroke, all I could feel was the burn in my shoulders.

So, the list of things I need to work on before my first race of the season is now up to:

• Figure out to actually run a full 5km
• Improve my swim back to the 750m in 17 min pace I raced last fall
• Improve my shoulder strength to support this swim

Why do I get the feeling this list is going to get longer before it gets shorter (I haven’t yet gotten on the bike for the first time this season).  But that’s one of the things I actually love about this sport.  I “trained” (read: thought I was training – boy was I wrong) last summer before my first race.  And when I crossed the finish line I thought by do I have a laundry list of things to improve on before my next race.  And the more I train, the more things I find on this list.  It’s a form of self discovery; of self challenge.  I love the feeling of accomplishment when I swim, or run just that little bit faster, but at the same time feel like I’ve come away with even more things I want to improve.

I think the next thing to improve on is to stop eating hamburgers right before a training session!

– DO’G

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