Injury update: So I got shin splints. At first I was worried that the injury in my leg would be a stress fracture but the bone scan showed it is shin splints. Now, I have not had those in over 20 years, and I am still not sure sure why or how I got them, but I suppose it’s better than a stress fracture. So now I have a walking boot that I have to wear for the next four weeks. I can still swim and ride my bike (though I am not allowed to get off the saddle) and I might be able to start running sometime in September. My goal is to do the Kerrville sprint triathlon on September 29 so we’ll see how that goes.

So far swimming has been the hardest part of transitioning to triathlon. As a kid I didn’t have much formal training. My dad taught me to swim when I was seven or eight years old in exchange for a pair of goggles. I still remember him teaching me to float, move my arms, and turn my head to breath. It took the better part of a day and I ended up learning the basics (and getting said goggles) but that was about it: good enough for a social swimming pool. Fast forward ten years and my next encounter with swimming lessons was as a cadet at the United States Air Force Academy. As part of the curriculum, during freshman year (formally called fourth degree year) all cadets learn the basic strokes and also water survival. Somehow, the water survival part actually stuck because a few years later I saved my dad from drowning in a river in Colombia. I wasn’t a strong swimmer but it was one of those situations when your training comes back to you and you act instinctively. I am sure it wasn’t a textbook rescue but my dad is alive and well so I must have done something right.

Now, twenty-odd years later I have had to learn how to swim again because, as I found out, my technique was really bad. I started swimming one day at the local school district aquatic center because I figured it would be a matter of building endurance more than anything else. I mean, how bad could my form be, right? Wrong. While I still remembered some of the things I learned at Air Force and tried to apply them in my early swims, it became apparent to me that I was much slower than just about everyone else around me. Most of the other swimmers are considerably older than me so it was really humbling to discover just how slow I was. Looking at other people’s lap times on Strava didn’t help either. Additionally, I was also getting very tired after just a few hundred yards, and here I was thinking I could swim almost two and a half miles. Classes, I needed classes.

I started researching swimming classes and learned about the Master Swimmers program. These are lessons for adults usually taught very early in the morning. One of my coworkers had attended them for a year during his Ironman training so it seemed like a good idea. However, none of the programs I found really fit my schedule. It was then that I discovered Mark Saroni (my coach) and Paragon Training (my team). I want to write about Mark and Paragon separately so suffice it to say the guy is an absolute badass and a great coach, and Paragon really feels like a family even though I’ve only been with them for 3 months. Around May I started swimming with Mark twice a week and yes, my technique was really bad. It was so bad I actually had to use two pull buoys tied together to help me hold my feet up. Since then my technique has improved quite a bit, as revealed by my lap times which are slowly getting better.

At first, it was very hard for me to relax in the pool. One of my biggest problems was my breathing. Aside from the fact that I tend to raise my head when I breath (which causes my legs to drop and act as an anchor), I just kept holding my breath for as long as I could before taking my next breath. Half the time I found myself more worried about not drowning than actually maintaining proper form. And let’s be honest: swimming in a pool is a little boring. You are staring at this blue line beneath you and every so often you turn around and count another lap. Many times I lost count after 20 or so laps so I am not even sure my early times are accurate and they may in fact be slower than I think they were. But I had a breakthrough last week. I was finally able to control my breathing and let my mind go. For the first time I was able to swim non-stop for close to an hour without feeling panic or anxiety. And I actually enjoyed it.

IMTX is still a few months away but it was important to me to reach this milestone. I needed to gain confidence in the water and now I actually believe I can do this. I have a ton of work to do to improve my technique but now I can actually focus on that instead of trying not to drown. I am still slow but now I am consistently slow over long distances. I call that a win.