Working out continues to be really important to me, perhaps maybe a little bit of an obsession. (That’s ok – if kept in check, it’s a relatively healthy obsession to have.) A couple months ago, I asked myself the question, “how much is too much“?

My goals are threefold:

• gain fitness, as defined by improved endurance, strength, flexibility & balance

• improve my mental health, emotional resiliency & stress management
• lose weight and improve my overall health & appearance

What motivates me? Being able to see noticeable progress. Feeling good about my fitness level and body. Setting (and achieving) interesting fitness goals.

This year, I wanted to start exercising regularly again and swim an open water swim. (I’ve done two – a 1 mile and a half mile.) In the next year, I’d like to try for a longer and more challenging open water swim – a 2 mile or 3.5 mile. I’d also like to try and finish a sprint triathlon, walking the run.

Up until recently, I’ve been exercising 45-60 minutes a day, alternating between distance swimming and walking, six days a week. (Note: I have a REALLY HARD TIME taking that one rest day a week off.) I’ve been doing yoga randomly and irregularly in the evening for strength and flexibility.

I’ve been somewhat stalled, not making much as progress as I’d like on fitness, weight loss or mental health management. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve decided to increase my workout duration but leave my (relatively healthy) eating habits alone.

So, now I’m alternating between swimming and walking 60-90 min daily, six days a week. I’m doing yoga regularly, every other day, in the evening. On the alternate evening I’m doing something active just to pry myself off the couch – my daily life is very sedentary. I’ll go for a bike ride, go out kayaking, take a short walk with the dogs, just get moving.

What do my swim workouts look like? They’re very distance-oriented. I battle my OCD tendencies constantly so try to avoid timing myself or doing any kind of timed interval work. On the plus side, I don’t get bored with distance swimming – my mind is always busy. My routine is usually similar to this:

    Mile freestyle warmup
    400 kick, flutter, dolphin, breaststroke
    4 x 200s, varying strokes, short (10-15 sec) rest
    400 freestyle warmdown/stroke drills

I’m trying to make this fitness journey sustainable and enjoyable. I can’t increase workout duration any more without it becoming a time management problem – although there’s certainly room to work on intensity, and weave more activity into my couch potato telecommuting lifestyle.

When I mentioned that one of my goals was to try open water swimming, my triathlete and fitness instructor friend Stephanie was enthusiastic; she suggested doing a relay triathlon in Bryan’s memory. (They were lifelong friend of Bryan’s; her husband Chuck was Bryan’s college & grad school roommate.)

We compared dates and events, and finally settled on the Kirkland Triathlon this last weekend. Unfortunately, Chuck hurt himself a couple days before the event, so Steph rallied to do both the bike & run – she is amazing! (She’s training for the Portland marathon two weeks from now.)

One disadvantage of this event was that it was at 7am. In Kirkland. That meant leaving the house at 4:40am to make the 5:20am ferry. And — cold, 68° lake water never seems very appealing at that hour of the day.

There were over 1,000 entrants in this triathlon, and a few dozen relay teams. A triathlon is swim, bike, run – and relay team members have to tag each other in the transition area between legs of the event.

Because the triathlon had so many participants, we started in waves of about 50 – 60 swimmers, 5 minutes apart, and each wave had different colored swim caps. We’d wade in until we were waist deep after the group ahead of us took off, then wait our turn. I prefer to start near the back, I don’t care for the melee at the front. The water wasn’t nearly as cold as I was afraid it would be, I was fine.

The first 100 yards or so are always tough, adjusting to the cold, the crowd, the different stroke technique. (for me, seven strokes head down, one with head up, to stay straight) Then I found my rhythm – and this time I started passing people. A lot of people. Maybe enjoying it was not the best sportsmanship, but it was satisfying. According to Steph, I finished about a third of the way back in my group – not bad for starting in the back row. If it had been longer I would have been able to pass more swimmers.

Then Steph took off on her bike like the experienced triathlete she is. (She’s done an Ironman and a few ½ Ironman tris – I admire her strength & endurance.)

I couldn’t get to the finish to watch her because the course was laid out like a pretzel and crossing the course was nearly impossible. I hung out in the transition area, overheard the swimming organizers debriefing, and apparently they rescued 6 swimmers in trouble, and pulled out another 66 who asked for assistance. My gosh! I can’t imagine trying a deep water, lake swim unless you were completely prepared for it.

Would I do another relay triathlon? Definitely! It was fun and I think I supported our team creditably. I’d also like to shoot for a longer swim next summer, if I find the right event.

Thanks, Steph, for this awesome opportunity!

I’m kinda OCD about escalating exercise. (Gee, there’s a surprise!) I feel like there always has to be progress, in amount of time spent, in speed, mileage, strength, whatever. One one hand it’s good; I’m goal oriented. On the other hand I can overdo it and have injured myself, by pushing too hard.

I’m at the point now where I think I need to stop the build-up, at least of duration. An hour of yoga (3-4x a week) and an hour of something cardio daily is probably sufficient and it’s working well for me. I can focus on technique, form, speed, or intervals, but I think continuing to push for more time is counterproductive.

Although I actually enjoy strength training, I don’t want to do it it – I’m one of those atypical females that bulks up a bit with weight training. Yoga (and Pilates as a first cousin) contain a significant strength element but the focus is different enough it doesn’t have the same effect.

I do enjoy cross training, not doing the same thing all the time. It’s fun to go on a bike ride instead of a walk, or kayaking instead of a swim – it keeps things interesting and works different muscles.

When I was young, dumb and at the peak of my physical conditioning, I was swimming 2 x 2hr workouts a day, plus lifting weights an hour a day. I also ran 2-3x a week for crosstraining, and played racquetball and took dance for fun. I was perpetually exhausted but in fabulous shape, 17% body fat.

I wonder if I didn’t sort of warp my metabolism back then, so that I’d require that kind of workout load to ever again be slim. I hope not, because that’s not happening! I have a life. I’ll see where I end up with current efforts.

You may have heard of Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ famous book, Women who Run With the Wolves? Well, I have photographic evidence that I am, instead, a woman who swims with the ducks.

Back in April, inspired by my son’s slightly insane bike ride, I set a goal – to swim an open water distance swim. The swim I had in mind, the punishing 3.5 mi Puget Sound crossing, is not being held this year, but there are several lake swims scattered around the Puget Sound this summer.

I set my sights on the first one scheduled as a ‘maybe’. I completed it today – the Green Lake open water swim, a mile across the lake and back. My goals for the event were simple – to finish the race, and to not be last. I accomplished both, plus, I was very pleasantly surprised by my time. (Until, of course, I compared it with my 15-minutes faster high school mile time… LOL)

My wonderful mother was my companion, supporter and towel holder for the event – thank you, mom! While mom is not a distance swimmer, she is swimming a few events in August in the Senior Olympic Nationals, held at Stanford, so it was great having another swimmer cheer for me.

One woman she was chatting with while I swam asked, “If this is your daughter’s first open water event, why did she choose the mile instead of the easier half-mile?”

Sheesh. Some people. Why do people climb the TALLEST mountain in north America, or in the world, rather than one that’s half that high? If I could accomplish it – and I routinely swim more than that in training – of course I wanted to swim the longer event.

Shoot, I’d like to try the Puget Sound crossing. Catalina Island. Long Island. Maybe someday the English Channel! (although probably not) These aren’t because I love the activity so much – it’s because they’re the big mountains on the horizon worth climbing.

So, back to today’s swim. In some ways it was harder than I anticipated, and in some ways easier.

Please note that I am not in this picture, but just to the right, out of frame. This is on purpose.

The cold water, at about 68° was more of an impact than I expected. I chose not to get in and warm up, ‘warm’ being a bit of a misnomer. My initial plunge started me hyperventilating a bit and I had a hard time evening my breathing out and establishing a rhythm for about the first 200 yards.

Then I had a tough time staying on track. I know the drill, swim X strokes head down then 1 stroke head up to sight on a point across the lake, and I did 5:1, but I still tended to wander a bit, worse toward the end when I was more tired. The general lack of visibility in the murky water was a bit distracting, I couldn’t see other swimmers until I was nearly on top of them.

I got foot cramps a couple of time, which I never do in pool swimming, bit swam through those easily by just not kicking for a couple of minutes.

The distance itself was only a little tiring – and my shoulders are a bit achey tonight – but I expected that because this distance was unhelped by turns & pushing off the wall every 25 yards, like I do in the pool.

This is our finishing group. The swim went all the way across to the building at the other end, around a buoy, and back.

All in all, I’m very glad I did it. It was a low key event, 120 swimmers in the mile event, and folks were positive and supportive. I’ll do it again – maybe Lake Washington later this summer and perhaps the swim portion of a team triathlon in Olympia in September – both depending how my travel schedule works out this fall.

As many of you know, I’ve gotten back in the pool and started swimming again for physical and mental health purposes.

I love it. I absolutely love to swim. I don’t know why I’ve let it be so many years out of the water.

I swam competitively in junior high, high school & college. (Yes, that’s me in the white cap, foreground, in the picture.) I was never a star, just a good solid second string competitor with an occasional win in my best events. Back in those days I swam 5:30-7am and 3-5pm 6 days a week, with an added hour of weight training 3 days a week. It wouldn’t be unusual to put in 7,500 to 10,000 yards a day.

I remember the first race I ever won. 200 backstroke, Wenatchee swimming pool, I must have been 12 or 13. I had not the faintest idea that winning was possible, but I pulled ahead from the first stroke, and built upon my lead with each lap. When I touched the wall 2 or 3 body lengths ahead of the second place swimmer I was euphoric! And exhausted – the 200 hundred is a middle distance event.

Through the years I’ve started lap swimming a few times, but then my interest has petered out. I push myself too hard, get too competitive and critical, and compare myself unfavorably against my younger, faster, fitter self. I’ve even swam with the Masters’ team a couple of times but I didn’t enjoy it – I had to push too hard, and don’t enjoy swimming in a crowded lane. While I recall the elation of winning, those goals are not for me any more.

If I simply let myself enjoy swimming, without pushing or competitiveness, it’s a wonderful experience. From the moment I walk into the pool and smell the chlorinated air, put on my cap and goggles while looking at my still, glasslike lane, and take that first plunge into cool, embracing water, it’s entirely like coming home. I love the weightlessness, the smoothness, the hypnotic rhythm, and the mindful, meditative state I reach after lap upon lap.

I leave the pool completely centered, energy level turned up to max, with a clear mind and my anxieties drained away.

I don’t know why I ever stopped – and I sure don’t plan to again.