In Training

I've been swimming since I was about two or three years old, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I love being in the water. Even when I go to the beach, while most girls get a kick out of laying out in the sun, getting their tans on, I'm out in the ocean swimming and goofing off. Last week, when some punk lifeguard who was driving down the beach, came down to the shoreline and unnecessarily yelled at me to "be careful because the wind can really knock you over out there," I wanted to scream back, "I've been swimming in this ocean since probably before you were born and used to swim at near Olympic-like times, so please shut your piehole and move along!"

 I've been fortunate enough to have access to a swimming pool for my entire life, and at one point in time, I used to train like I was going to be the next Janet Evans/Summer Sanders/Dara Torres. While most of my friends were worshiping Tiffany Amber-Thiessen, Winona Ryder and Shannon Doherty, I wanted to be like the girls in the Olympics. Unfortunately, swimming as a sport was not something that was popular in my neck in the woods, and my parents couldn't drive me to Atlanta every other day, so it never went much further than me sometimes getting up at 4:30 a.m. to swim laps before school and recording and studying moves during every swim competition I ever caught on TV. Though, to be totally honest, when I went to UGA, I decided to make it my mission to try to walk on the swim team by my sophomore year, but well, that never happened either (the swim team or my sophomore year at UGA, oops). 

Anyway, since I'm 31 with a bad knee now, I don't exactly see myself having some fabulous Olympic career, but I do miss having that kind of fitness in my life. Okay, as you can see from my last post, I probably need to have that kind of fitness in my life. But that's the thing, when I'm exercising or eating well for my good health or whatever, I get bored and fall off the wagon really quickly. I need a different kind of motivation, which brings me to the point of this post.

While I was on vacation last week, I watched people partake in all sorts of water-related activities. Swimming, kayaking, surfing, diving etc. - all things I've always wanted to try but just never got around to or felt too out of shape to do. So, what if I made that my goal for next summer - to get into great shape for something beyond trying to look good in a pair of jeans (and, you know, not having a heart attack at 40 or something). I don't have one specific goal in mind, but I do have an idea of what I want to accomplish, and I'll work on making that more specific as time goes by. 

I've already committed to turning my living room into a home gym, at least for a few months. (Which basically means moving my sofa and loveseat over to the little bar area between the kitchen and living room and replacing them with my exercise equipment.) I've been downloading all of my favorite Jock Jams tunes of the 90's to a workout playlist. I've also been researching both dry land and water workouts for swimmers, and I'm putting together a daily/weekly plan. And yesterday, when I went grocery shopping, I tried to stick to mostly fruits and veggies and protein that is not fried chicken.

I'm posting all of this mostly for my own benefit, so if you're reading it, and your eyes are glazing over, I apologize. I've been working on a post-vacation wrap-up and a few other posts all week, but I still don't have internet, and won't until June 27, so my time is limited. I don't plan to make weekly updates or anything, but I'll be sure to let you know when I've joined that adult swim team, learned to surf or gotten certified to go SCUBA diving.