Today's opportunity was another chance to help out Paul Newsome with the SwimSmooth Squad down at Claremont pool. Now I will admit this wasn't a chance to try an entirely brand new experience, but helping down the pool is still quite new and so I am claiming it. Besides, I haven't helped with a Monday swim before and so in my book it still qualifies.
Paul run's two sessions on Monday, the one I helped Paul with today was the 7:00am Pure Technique session which again was a really new experience for me. I haven't even swum this session before, let alone helped out with it down the pool. If that isn't trying something new then I don't know what is.
Helping out with the Pure Technique session was a sort of counter-intuitive experience. The session sounds like it should be fairly easy and rather relaxing and I am sure it was for the folks in the pool. Certainly I have always found technique sessions a great opportunity to clear the head and enjoy being in the water without trying to bury yourself in it. However, out on the pool deck it was actually a little bit more stressful. There is a lot going on during a technique session. People move through the session at different speeds and so across the three lanes people will be up to all different points of the program. This is great if you are swimming because it means that everybody works through the entire program no matter what their speed. However, out of the pool it means you are very busy trying to keep track of what everyone is up to so that you can help them with the next part of the program as they reach it. Busy stuff. But boatloads of fun.
And that was really my main take away from this morning. Well one of the main take aways anyway. The first big takeaway is that every time I work with Paul down the pool I learn a little bit more about why SwimSmooth is as successful as it is and why Paul is so good at running it. From the pool you don't quite understand how hard he is working to make the sessions run so smoothly and effectively for all the swimmers. Watching from outside the pool has given me a much great appreciation of the amount ofeffort involved. The other big take away from this morning was that I had a ball. This is only session two down the pool, but I still enjoyed it. The plan is to head back down and help Paul again on Wednesday and I am hoping I enjoy that one just as much. I am really looking forward to that one.
Today hasn't all been running around on a pool deck though. The other thing I got up to today was this.
This is me wearing another Holter Monitor. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the point of wearing the Holter Monitor this time around is to give a better picture of how many ectopic beats I am getting post surgery. I know my heart is feeling a lot better since I had my ablation, but it can be hard to know if what I am feeling is a true reflection of what is going on. Having the Holter Monitor on for 24 hours will give a better idea of that picture. No matter what the Holter shows up, it won't make much different to the amount of exercise I can do, but it is an important first step on my way back to moderate exercise. If the Holter Monitor confirms the improvements then the next step will be a stress test, which will hopefully give an idea of how my heart behaves under load. If the stress test results are good then that will be a serious step towards being allowed to do moderate exercise again.
One step at a time though.
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