May 21: My First Swim Practice

Today was our first group swim. I was pretty nervous going in, and had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that somehow, we would swim 1500 yards. I had no concept of how far that was, other than the fact that that equates to three pretty long par 5s in golf.

It turns out I wasn't the only nervous one. Many pepole there felt the same way as me. We had about 20-25 people show up in the group swim, which made for a lot of fun. Everyone was upbeat and enthusiastic, despite the nerves. When we started, I was so nervous I forgot to put my goggles down (and here I was wondering why I couldn't see anything!). Good thing I didn't lose my contacts!

As time went on, I gained my confidence. I'm lucky. I grew up around water, and actually swam competitively in grade school. Though the techniques have changed, I think I caught on pretty quick. I attribute much of that to our swim coach, Anne. She ROCKS as a coach. She swam competitively in college, and is an Ironman (wow!). I also had gotten tips from my online mentor from beginnertriathlete.com, Rich.

With Anne and Rich's advice, I was able to complete all of the required sets. It turns out we didn't do 1500 yards, we did 2000 yards. That's 80 laps in the pool. Holy smokes! I am glad I wasn't counting.

Here are some of the things that I learned today:

- Keep your head down when swimming
- Get your armpits out of the water when reaching out on your stroke
- Keeping a positive attitude and enthusiasm makes the time go by really quick
- 1650 yards = 1 mile...(which means I swam more than 1 mile today!) Yay!!!
- I absolutely LOVE my TNT team and coaches. They are all awesome and help keep me going!

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Check out my fundraising progress at:
http://www.active.com/donate/tntmi/DunCAN

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