This morning my alarm clock went off at 4:30 a.m. ‘A tad early’, you might be thinking. And I definitely agree, in fact I went back to sleep for half an hour. 
When I awoke for the second time, it was still pitch black outside. This time, however, I got up and prepared myself. I left the house shortly after, noting the cool darkness and contemplating whether I should have waited till summer to attempt this when at least the sun would be up at that hour.
Where was I going before sunrise? This morning, I started swimming again. That’s right. I went to the pool where my long time coach greeted me warmly. And off I went to attempt to get through 1000m. A mere 1000m that in years gone by I could have knocked out as an individual event (actually my events were 800m and 1500m back then).
My strategy each time I pushed off the wall (no diving, cause I had no energy to climb out once I started) – I channeled a bit of Dory from “Finding Nemo”. My silent mantra was “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” I just tried to keep moving once I started (even if the pace was that of a water-mobile snail.
Though I prepared myself for an hour of swimming, I was headed home by 6:15 a.m. I got through a total of 1100m (the last 100m being a cool-down). I felt better than I thought I would though I was totally exhausted with pains in muscles I forgot existed. I also came away with a benchmark to measure my progress as the last (official) 100m was “on the clock”, meaning it was timed. I won’t disclose it here but suffice it to say that I have a long way to go before my times are presentable (it was under 2 minutes though).
The plan for now is for this to continue once a week. So next Friday I will be back (hopefully fully recovered by then). The plan for today? More sleep.
Yes, well I am not really a morning person but I know the evening thing is not going to happen. I will always find other things to do to get out of it. I don’t have a lot of alternatives at that pre-sunrise hour.
Right now the motivation is high and the timing is good (I will post further). But I recognize my need for structure when doing hard stuff like this so working with my coach is the best approach.
This is soo funny. HC wants to go swimming in the mornings and he was asking me who we knew that would probably want to join him. I mentioned that you swim and we both thought, ‘nah, there’s no way B waking up dem hours fi go swimming’… and 2 days later, here you are telling us about it
All the best with this!
Woohoo!! Way to go B
:mrgreen: