I have been humbled

I started swimming about a month ago. I was inspired by a friend who was training for a triathlon. I figured that I should start an exercise program and swimming sounded like a good idea. Every time I run, my left knee starts to hurt. I can bicycle, the only problem is that all the routes around me are a little bit too short and if I extend them I get onto some major roads which are not bike friendly. The best low impact sport available is swimming.

At first, I was having problems. I couldn't get past two laps in the pool; after that, I was so out of breath that I either had to stop or I had to switch to breast stroke. Finally, after 4 days of swimming with no improvements, I had an epiphany. I decided to slow down my stroke and see if I could get a more regular breathing pattern than gasping for breath every chance I got. It worked! Slowly over the next couple of weeks, I worked up to 20 laps per workout doing 10 laps at a time. I felt pretty good about myself since my goal is to be able to do 40 laps during a single workout (a little over 1.1 miles) and I was already half way there.

Well, I went in today for my standard 20 lap workout since I haven't been in the pool for over a week. I ended up sharing my lane with a woman who had a lot of swimming equipment with her. She had the full set; hand paddles, kickboard, and flippers. I already knew I was in trouble, I've seen the people in the Master's swim session using these things and they are all fairly good swimmers. I started on my first 10 laps while she was getting ready. While I was working on my 2nd lap she started her workout. A couple of laps later she passed me for the first time. A little while after that, she passed me for the second time. She would have passed me for a third time, but she had already finished her 10 warmup laps while I was still working on my 9th lap!

Don't get me wrong, I don't really care that it was a woman who was passing me so many times, it was just the fact that I was so SLOW! After running cross country for 6 years, I have realized that my top athletic performance was typically on par with the top women athletes. Who really cares. I think the thing that really got to me was when she passed me while using the kickboard without flippers. Translation, my combined effort using my arms and legs was not as powerful as her using her legs alone. Ouch!

Maybe the only consilation that I could take away from this experience is that there is a very slight chance that she could be an olympian/former olympian. After all, the US Olympic training facility is located in Colorado Springs. I think I will go with that assumption and feel better about my swimming ability. =)