Learning to Swim

I was never an athlete growing up. To me swimming meant staying afloat and I did quite well at that. It wasn't until I was 23, when I decided I wanted to become a triathlete, I realized I would first have to learn how to swim. Thinking I could do it all on my own, I packed my swim bag and headed to our local pool. Unfortunately instead of looking like Natalie Coughlin at the Olympics, I looked more like a dying cockroach caught in the downward flush of a toilet. I was swimming to stay alive vs. swimming with skill.

Not long after that, I took the advice of my friends and bought Terry Laughlin's Total Immersion dvd.

I realized that there really is a technique to swimming and I started doing the recommended drills and I quickly progressed. I learned how important head positioning was, how to get power out of each swim stroke and proper body rotation. That dvd was a life saver! Or at least a self-esteem saver because having children laugh at me trying to swim has been burned in my brain.

Unfortunately, little did I know that swimming in a pool following a blue line on the floor was much different than swimming in open water with 300 other nervous first time triathletes.

To be continued...