Tag Archives: open water swimming

My dad always reminds me, “Life is about the journey, not just the goal.” This weekend I relished the journey and the small successes. Fist pumping silently ensued.

On Saturday, my aerobars asked me on a romantic rendezvous through Mines canyon and instead of fretting about whether or not I was saying or doing the right thing, I just did what felt right. And would you look at that, when I stopped thinking and just started doing, I actually enjoyed my time in aero…well, except when I tried taking off my arm warmers, but that’s a different story. Regardless, we’re now going steady and I can’t wait until our next date.

On Sunday, I made an even bigger baby step as I vowed to face open water swimming again. I won’t lie; when I woke up on Sunday I would have rather spent the morning pounding my forehead against the wall. I literally thought of every excuse of how I would put it off until this afternoon, until next week, until the grass grew about three inches longer. Then I told myself to man up and just get it done, with the caveat being I would go early before any of the group got there and I could just do my own thing.

The scene of the crime.

After wiggling into my wetsuit, I reminded myself that this was not the time to swim to the “rock pile” and back (the same 1,600 meter swim I did the first time that goes far into the reservoir and caused the panic attack). Instead, I was going to stay in the lane lines where I could see the bottom, where it wasn’t too foggy and my mind thought it would be “safe.”

Awkwardly taking horrible self-portraits pre-swim.

As I got out into the water, the first thing I did was put my face in and blew bubbles. I sat there for probably five minutes just practicing my breathing and calming down, and you know what, it worked. From that moment on I simply swam and whoa, shocker, I didn’t die! First open water baby step COMPLETE! Next up, immersing myself back into the “Oh my god I can’t see anything!” open water swim zone. I’m still anxious, still scared, but I know that taking each piece at a time will ease me right into it.

While each of these small happenings may not seem like much, to me their baby steps that I’m proud of and all part of the journey.

What baby steps were amazing parts of your journey this week?