Water time

A bit of and old activity made new again today.

This morning I was down to Fremantle Pool for a bit of a swim session with my mate Sean. Usually with these sessions I write the program and Sean swims it. I typically float around a bit, but I don't really do much swimming, instead taking it easy and keeping my heart rate down.

This morning though I just felt like swimming. Not sure why, but rather than do kick or something like that I wanted to turn the arms over, which is exactly what I did.

By necessity I took the swimming very easy, only swimming 100m out of every 300m from Sean, meaning I only swam a bit over 1000m, but that was enough to feel like I got a swim in. It was also enough to remind me just what I enjoy about swimming.

I will admit that not all swimming is enjoyable. Sometimes it is hard and sometimes it is stressful. When you are chasing a time and pushing with everything you have and your body is screaming, then it can verge on the not so fun. However, when you are swimming like I was this morning, just swimming for the sake of swimming, rolling the arms over and enjoying the sensation of being in the water, then it can be a lovely thing to do, which is exactly what this morning was.

When I was in full training I always struggled with motivation for swimming. I knew the sessions did me good, and I was usually alright at them, but they were also hard and so it could be a struggle to get myself out the door. However, early on in my Ironman preparation last year I started doing a swim by myself on a Monday morning. It would usually be about 4000m and be a mixture of technique and recovery. Sometimes I did a bit of work on my Monday swim, but it was never a lot. Mostly the session was about getting in the water and swimming.

Over the course of those Monday swims I began to realise again that swimming could be enjoyable. It wasn't that I didn't know that previously, but more that I had forgotten it over the course of my training.

To be honest I started to find that with each of the disciplines. There was time to work and that bit was hard and enjoyable in its own way, however, there was also time to ease back and go steady and during those times I would find the moments were I realised just how lucky I was to be doing what I was. The time in the pool today was a small version of that. As I was swimming along today just thinking about crusing, rather than thinking about going hard, I realised just how much I like swimming. Seems like a strange thing to have forgotten.

Hopefully I get the chance to remember it a bit more in future.