Regaining The Waters: Izulde's Return To Swimming (And Fitness?)

[Izulde]

There's something about being single, male, and turning 30 that's devastating, particularly when one has a lengthy track record of dating younger (that said, there *was* this one woman who was 15 years older, when I was 22, but she was most assuredly the outlier.) It gets even worse every year after that. 33 now, and damned if I don't even want to *think* about 35, much less 40, in this condition.

My body, formerly pretty well toned and athletic back in high school, has, over the years, acquired fuckloads of fat and flabbiness. I was 150 back then; I've gone north of 200 far too many times since. That's a hell of a lot of difference. I'm about 190 last time I checked, and that's after losing around 17 pounds in Japan over the summer.

So obviously, some shit has to change. Lot of factors went into my tubbiness, but one of the biggest is lack of exercise.

Long story short: I played several sports in high school (football, soccer, swimming, track, tennis). Only one I ever varsity lettered in was swimming, although tennis was my favorite, and still my secret love. Since then, I've had a couple of club sport stints in fencing at schools (Minnesota, Wyoming), and an on-again, off-again relationship with kyukido, which combines taekwando, jujitsu, and judo.

I do walk a lot, but that's nowhere near enough to keep back the creep.

So then I'm watching the first two episodes of Season 4 of Glee the other night, and I see how damn hot Brody is and how I'm, well, not. It made me think of the time freshman year in high school that my sister's hot, older female friend saw me at a track meet and said, "Wow, Izulde's getting a serious bod."

I got said fine ass form from swimming, and to be honest, it was true. I've never looked as good physique-wise as I did when I was swimming (Too bad my face in high school was so ugly, it used to curdle the milk in the bags.)

Thus, on a complete whim, I've decided to start swimming again, and maybe make some other lifestyle changes (fuck, I hate that buzzphrase).

Oh, and the other reason I went with swimming: I despise lifting weights and hate running even more, despite two years of high school track and three years of track and cross country in middle school. To this day, I still don't know why I spent so many years running when I could have done more sports that I actually, you know, enjoyed?

Anyway, today was my first day trying to do an actual swimming workout since I was 17. Yeah. 16 years since then, which is super depressing because I'm like, these freshmen I teach were like 2 and 3 years old the last time I swam a workout and now they're in college.

I was very conscious of the long, long gap, and I knew not to even think about doing the 3500-4000 meter sets I used to do 6 times a week in high school (Saturday mornings, too).

So, much to my chagrin, I found myself googling beginning swimmer workouts and found a page that has... 500 meter sets listed. "Okay," I told myself, "I know this is totally a yardage total you practically used to do just as your freaking warmup in high school, but, hello? 16 years?"

And so I wrote down the following workout to use today:

Warmup
4 x 25 (30 second intervals)

Ladder Set
25/50/75/75/50/25 (30 second intervals)

Cooldown
4 x 25 (30 second intervals)

By 30 second intervals, I mean after each one, I would take a 30 second rest. So say for example I did the first 25 of the ladder set, I would wait 30 seconds before doing the 50, then wait 30 seconds before doing the first 75, etc.

I decided to stick just to freestyle for the first week or two. This was about me just getting back to the swimming swing of things.

How It Went
The Warmup
This is what happens when it's been so long. Your mind and body automatically revert back to its last known position, which in my case was being able to maintain a pretty decent clip for a 50 and only needing to take one, maybe two breaths at most.

It's one thing to do that at 17 when you've been swimming competitively for 3-4 years. It's another thing entirely to do it when you're 33 and out of shape. Needless to say, I went at the warm-ups too hard and with too many strokes between breaths. I was a little winded after the warmups, but didn't think I'd have any problems the rest of the way.

The Ladder
First 25? No problem. First 50, I started getting a little dizzy. Then, the first length of the first 75, for whatever reason, I got -really- dizzy, cramped up, and was about to black out. So I stopped after that first 25 and spent a full minute, just catching my breath, feeling like a damned old fool and glad there were no hot girls around to see this Blobasaurus wheezing.

That was the first interval I failed. But I resolved to press on anyway and completed the second 75. Was gasping at the end of that one and needed to do a 40 second interval, but from there, completing the second 50 and the last 25 were a comparative breeze.

The Cooldown
At this point, my legs and shoulders were starting to ache with the effort of the ladder, so I just took it slow and made my 30 second intervals. Got out, went and spent a couple of minutes in the whirlpool, and then left.

Overall Synopsis
Intervals made: 12
Intervals failed: 2
Target meterage: 500
Made meterage: 450
Failed meterage: 50

Not the best start, to be honest. But not the worst, either, especially since I committed a cardinal sin: I swam without goggles, because I forgot to pick some up. That'll change for tomorrow of course.

Other notes: As I said, all freestyle. No flip turns, either. Nor was I shooting for any times other than making the rest intervals. This is about me getting very slowly back into things, so I don't burn myself out.

Technically you're supposed to go 3x a week when you're starting out and build up that way, but I'm going to try and do 5x a week, skipping Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are my busiest days.

Since I'm going to the university's rec center for this, I also have to plan my schedule carefully. When I went around 5:00 or 6:00 tonight, it was fine. There was only one open lane, but that was all I needed. Weekdays are going to be much trickier - the pool closes at 5:30 on M-Th for a class. It's also closed until 11:30 am on Saturday because of another class. Obviously this isn't going to be all semester, but it's something to be aware of.

I've heard the best times to go are from 12-3 during the week, so we'll try that and see.

But first order of business is to get goggles. I'll do that tomorrow before I go in for the workout. Not sure if I'll use the same one, or if I'll try a form workout. We'll see.

[Izulde]

The only clean swimsuit I could find was a velcro front one. This turned out to be a mistake.

Irritated after the Dolphins loss, I decided nonetheless to trek to Target and grab goggles and a better lock. Those things gotten, it was off to the campus rec center. I nearly tripped as I was walking in, because I thought I saw a certain girl on the treadmills, but quickly scurried off to check in and all that.

Goggles strapped on, I headed to the pool with the following plan in mind:

Repeat yesterday's workout and hit the 500 and all intervals

I didn't get in right away because it was a lot busier today and all the lanes were occupied with at least one person. I'm not the type who swims workouts with complete strangers, especially when I don't know our speed differences and I'm likely to be the slow one in my mind.

Fortunately, the life guard had two girls who were at the pool together join up in the same lane, freeing up a lane for me, which was *very* nice, both of the guard and the girls.

The warmups
No worries here. A little out of breath towards the end, and I noticed serious problems with my form - namely, my old habit of having powerful strokes, but my legs almost dead weight because I don't kick much at all. This was a huge problem when I swam competitively along with my dive, and although I made progress on the former and finally corrected my latter, a 15-16 year layoff is going to impact that.

Still, no issues. Made intervals and all that and already felt in better shape than yesterday because I didn't try and rockstar my breathing patterns.

The Ladder
First 25, fine and dandy. First 50, my arms started feeling really sore and tired, probably a consequence of the essential deadweight legs. So the first 75 comes up and I do the first 25 breast, the second 25, and I go to turn for the final length of the 75.. and the velcro front comes undone.

I immediately curl up into a ball and make my way to the wall where I can put my front against it and fix the wardrobe malfunction before anyone sees more of me than they want to, but I was like damn it.

Naturally, this screwed up my interval. But still, I started the second 75 and did breast, free, and then promptly pushed myself for that missed 25 with the last length of fly. And man, oh man, was it ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly form. Granted, my free and breast form were horrid, too, but my fly was so bad, I was ashamed to even be in the pool.

Second 50 was breast, free, and then the last 25 was free.

Bonus 25
I was pissed about missing the full first 75, so I did a 25 pull with a buoy that I didn't need to, just to make sure I'd get the 500 in. Really should have done it with kicking, but then...

Cooldown
Only thing noteworthy here is that on the second to last 25, I held the buoy out and did a kick 25. I noticed that after I did, the last 25 was much better formwise than earlier in the session.

Statistical Rundown/Overall Thoughts
Target Yardage: 500
Actual Yardage: 500
Missed Intervals: 1

Overall, better than yesterday's initial foray. I'm definitely going to have to keep mixing in different strokes, as I think doing just free was overdoing it yesterday the more I look at it.

And, as much as I hate doing kick workouts, I'm going to have to do more of them. When I swam in high school, what it took me to do one 25 of kick, the rest of the team could do 50 and 75. Conversely, when it was stroke work only and no kicks, they would be the ones doing 25 and me doing 50 or 75 in that same time span.

Yesterday, I was tired and somewhat winded after the workout. Today, I notice quite a bit of energy, so much that I almost decided to try the treadmills to get more leg work in.

But then I decided not to push my luck. There will be time enough for that sort of thing.