After a Week Off

I was out of the pool for a week.  I was visiting family.  I totally could have chosen to go to a local pool there for a swim or two, but chose not to.

From a swimming time standpoint, it sure looked like a good choice.   I think I may have needed a little break.

But today just felt right while swimming.   I had the thought while doing my drills.  Now,  drills aren't my favorite thing to do while swimming, but after my little thought a couple of weeks ago, I've been pretty diligent about doing 500 yards of drills first thing every swim practice.  I know it just needs to be a thing, so I do it and I think it's paying off.  Certainly getting in and starting out with the kickboard just felt good.  It felt like I'd come back to my natural environment, being in the water.

I also had a thought.  I have swimming goals, don't get me wrong.  But I'm also looking at the big picture and long term. If I tie myself up in knots getting anxious about meeting them, I'm kinda missing the point.

The point is to have fun with this. Sure, sure, I wanna do some stuff that's hard.  That's real. But I'm also waaayyyy over-training for the events I want to do over the next six months.  Being well-prepared is great, and I'm all for that, but with my swimming volume, it's more like I'm training to swim a real marathon this summer, not a measly two miles.

While I've no intention of rolling back the volume, as I do have long-term goals that require it, I need to relax a bit about it.

The point of this is to have fun, for pity's sake.  I concede it's a weird, masochistic definition of fun sometimes, but there's still my inner six year old that needed to be pried out of the pool with a crowbar.

I like to give that kid some indulgence in my swims.