A second attempt at swim class

It was Monday, which meant I tried the whole swim class thing again.

The alarm started blaring at 5 a.m. (it was still dark by the way, just like last week) and I rolled out of bed, threw on my stuff and headed out the door.

I got to the pool and picked up a pair of flippers and got in. Our coach - side note, not only is it weird to say I've got a coach, but especially since I don't remember his name. I think it might be Rick - told us we were starting with a 250 yard warm up.

Gulp.

Folks, I haven't swam since the Oshkosh Triathlon at the beginning of August. So a 250 yard warm up? This could be tough. But I started swimming. And I really didn't stop. Just momentarily around 100 yards, mostly to let the girl in front of me get a bit of distance. I didn't want to get kicked in the face at 5:30 in the morning.

With the warm up done, we were told to put on our flippers. Now, I swear I picked up a matching pair, but some how I ended up with one blue flipper and one that was half blue and half lime green. Oh well.

We started out with this ladder of 7 50 yard swims, each time getting progressively faster, with about a minute of rest in between. Not knowing how fast I could go, I started out pretty slow and gradually tried to get faster. I think my first 50 was about 50 seconds (yes, I said I went slow) and I ended up finishing the last one in just shy of 40 seconds. Not speedy, but I'll take it.

Then it was time for drills.

Drills? What are these? I've never done drills. My previous swim "workouts" have consisted of me getting in the pool and just swimming back and forth. But drills were being added today, hopefully to help me become a better swimmer.

We did one-armed swimming, some one-armed swimming with a shoulder lift and finally a drill the coach called high elbow entry delay. They were interesting. I've got the idea, but I struggled a bit. I'm pretty confident I'll catch on quickly though.

Before I knew it, the hour was up and it was time to go.

The swim felt good. I didn't feel as intimidated as I did last week and I felt more comfortable in the water. I managed to find two other girls in the class who are at my skill level, so I'm hoping to hang out in a lane with them. I think I'm going to end up liking this.