I’m just going to come right out and say it: swimming is bullshit. Last week my trainer scheduled me to swim a total of over 5800 meters. What the hell. Three days of swimming, three days of stinky chlorine, three days of getting out of the pool and having perma-freezing fingers for the rest of the night. I’m sure Teresa the Dolphin is immune to all of these maladies, but I’m not because I suck at swimming and I feel like my progress is excruciatingly slow. And you want to hear the real kick in the balls? My trainer scheduled a 2750 meter swim and wrote down “total swim time: 40 minutes.” What the crap! I didn’t magically grow gills in 2009. She knows that I’m too ghetto a swimmer to pull out 1.2 miles in under 50 minutes, so how am I supposed to manage 1.7 in 40? Just because I watched Michael Phelps glide his way to eight gold medals doesn’t mean I learned by osmosis! Progress takes time, mofo! I don’t know what it is about swimming, but it feels like every other swim I have goes terribly. One day I’ll have what I think is a good swim. I’ll get in the pool and feel pretty good and think, “I could swim and swim and swim forever!” Then, no joke, the next time I get in the pool I’ll be gasping for air after 4 lengths and flailing my legs like a fool. My shoulder will ache, I’ll swallow roughly a gallon of questionable YMCA water, and I’ll dejectedly watch some a-hole flying back and forth in the lane next to me, doing his fancy flip turns in his one-size-too-small Speedo. (How on earth he glides through the water aerodynamically with those plum smugglers dangling is beyond me.) And don’t get me started on the actual technique. There are at least a dozen things you have to remember to do with your body when you’re swimming. My mind keeps racing and I can barely keep track of it all. When I’m swimming, I’m thinking, “Head down. Don’t look at the ceiling when you breathe. Don’t windmill your arms. Fingers together. High elbows. Do a good ‘catch.’ Finish your damn stroke! Push! Turn on your side. Reach out. No, further. Small kicks — from the hips. Don’t bend your knees. Keep your legs up. Abs tight. Oh, breathe. Breathe!” I’m not coordinated enough to prevent myself from running into corners or tripping up stairs, let alone remembering (and sustaining) 50 swimming tips while I’m flailing in the water. If I focus on my legs, my arms get all stupid. If I’m conscious of improving my catch, my legs go all crooked. It’s like my limbs react oppositely to each other. So yeah, swimming is bullshit. Pool swimming is stupid, open water swimming is really stupid, and dry land swim conditioning classes are uber-stupid (and make my triceps all hurty). I hate it, and yet I subject myself to it a few times a week. Why? Because I am stubborn. Because I begrudgingly want to get faster and look like less of a spazz when I swim. Because one day I’d like to be better than a mediocre athlete. And because there’s no good way to cheat at swimming (scuba gear ain’t exactly subtle), so I guess I’m just going to have to learn. I know, bullshit, isn’t...

Last February when Rebecca and I decided to tackle our first season of triathlons, my most immediate concern revolved firmly around the fact that I am strongly opposed to drowning. Not only that, but the last time I had done any swimming outside of treading water in a lake or jumping around in the ocean like a total idiot was probably around 10 years ago. So, knowing we had only a matter of months to get from a “dead man’s float” and advanced dog paddle skill level to a manageably decent crawl stroke, we both set off for the local pool. I’m pretty sure our first swim was only 1200 meters, but somehow we managed to drag the ordeal out for almost an hour. In hindsight, I appreciate the fact that the lifeguards were able to keep their laughter to themselves. We both swam with our heads almost entirely out of the water, feet dragging under the surface, gasping for air with every single stroke. It was an exhausting ordeal, and quickly became apparent that we should probably seek out some guidance and try to hone our technique prior to our first race. Over the next twelve weeks we participated in a triathlon swim training class at the Seattle Athletic Club that helped provide us with some basic technique, and took us from being humiliatingly awful swimmers to just being competently poor. During that time we practiced sighting, breath control, and even some simulated group starts. So, as we continued to practice my confidence slowly grew. Here’s where it’s important to note the two distinctly different approaches Rebecca and I take with regard to our training. Where she tends to be extremely hard on herself and constantly question whether or not she is going to be able to accomplish something, I typically inflate myself into believing that if someone else can do it then so can I. As a result, in the weeks leading up to the race she had wisely decided to get in a couple of open water swims with our training group while I had come up with some excuses and quickly rationalized that “swimming is swimming.” Fast forward to the day of my first race, the Issaquah Sprint Triathlon. We arrive at the race with plenty of time to setup our transition area. Rebecca and I were both fairly nervous because it was our first race, and I was suddenly becoming concerned about the fact that despite all of the in-pool training, I hadn’t done a single open water swim. However, after surveying the 400 meter course I was able to calm myself by talking through how ludicrously close each of the buoys looked to the shore. “400 meters is nothing,” I told myself. “I can do this in my sleep, open water or not.” I confidently made my way into the water and prepared for my age group’s start. The gun goes off and I am swimming like I’m in the anchor leg of a 50 meter relay. It’s an all out effort the likes of which I’ve never put forth and I’m in the middle of a strong pack. Unfortunately, amidst my race day excitement and foolish bravado I’ve forgotten that I am NOT a very strong swimmer, and as my lungs begin to give out a sense of panic starts to set in. “What the hell was I thinking?” Now not only am I getting run over by everyone smart enough to go out at a sustainable pace, but I am also one-hundred-percent convinced I’m going to die before I round the first buoy. Somehow I manage to talk myself out of...

One of my greatest triathlon weaknesses (aside from running and biking, of course) is swimming. I don’t like swimming. I feel like my stamina in the water sucks, I drag my arm too much, my turnover is too slow, I’m either too hot or too cold, my wet suit is ghetto and ill-fitting, and I find swim training boring and craptacular. My disdain for swimming has reflected in my swim times: every race except for one has resulted in disappointment. I want to improve a lot in 2009, and I figured that a huge area of opportunity would be improving my swim. I think I can shave anywhere from 5-15 minutes off my worst half Ironman swim time, depending on how much I train. So I cued up the training montage music and signed up for a dry land swim conditioning class that would help strengthen my body and improve my swim stroke, technique, and stamina. Teresa teaches the swim conditioning class, and for good reason. She swam for the University of Nevada-Reno and is one fast mofo. My triathlon trainer is often the first female out of the water during races, and she was the fastest female swimmer in her age division at the Kona World Championships. She is pretty much twice as fast as me in the water. It’s depressing. I remember that for my first open water swim she gave me like a 5 minute head start before swimming after me, and she and I got to the buoy at the same time. Sigh. Anyway, I signed up for an hour of interval bike training and then did the swim conditioning class immediately afterwards. I’m not that hungry in the mornings so all I had to eat before working out was 3/4 of a Kashi Go Lean bar and some water. By the end of my dual workout I was ready to devour a mid-size farm animal. Betsy was my swim conditioning buddy that morning. We started by squatting down and chucking a huge weighted ball back and forth to each other, then we did about 40 triceps dips. After more ball passes and a second set of dips I was already feeling the dreaded jell-o arm effect…and we were only about 10 minutes into the workout. Oh God, I was in trouble. Let me pause and show you roughly what my triceps look like: I have the arm strength of a feeble cartoon octogenarian, and every exercise during this class was exploiting them with sadistic, unrelenting glee. Teresa made me get on the Vasa trainer, where I repeatedly failed to properly pull my arms back in the “catch” position. My wimpy arms were quivering under the teeny amount of weight Teresa had given me. After I half-assed about 20 reps, I switched with Betsy and dejectedly watched her adjust the tension and hammer out a ton of swim strokes with perfect form. I wish I had Betsy’s triceps. But I don’t. I have Mr. Burns-esque triceps. After 45 minutes of non-stop triceps abuse, I headed home to shower and get ready for work. I knew I’d be in trouble when I could already feel the soreness of my arms a couple hours after the class ended. Sure enough, the next day I felt like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Story, only instead of not being able to put my arms down, I couldn’t raise them more than halfway. I was rockin’ John McCain arms the entire weekend. Showering was hell, pulling my hair back was hell, rolling on deodorant was hell, changing shirts was hell. Jason quickly got tired of hearing my agonized shrieks whenever...