One Kilometer

So my very good friend, Hillary, who is into her third year of triathlons, has three kids, and works as a PICU nurse, has kicked me into gear.  She signed up for the same Olathe Triathlon as me, at which time she will be roughly five months post-partum from her third sweet baby.  That, my friends, is amazing. 

I was chatting with her the other day, asking novice questions like "What should I wear?" and "What if I have to pee?" and we got into a conversation about swimming distances.  I know that I have to swim 500 meters for this race and had pretty much set my training goal right at 500 meters.  When I first started, I was doing well to swim 50 meters without stopping, so 500 as a goal seemed just right.  Well, Ms. Hillary said that HER goal before her very first race was to be able to swim TWICE the distance that she would be swimming at race time....1000 meters!  So this made me think I needed to kick my butt into a higher gear. 

So today, at the gym, I forced myself to swim 1000 meters.   One whole kilometer.  Twenty back and forths.  Forty pool lengths.  For me, that is a huge amount of swimming.  But I did it and I feel...fabulous.

On another vein, my husband gave me just about the best compliment he could of ever given me.  We were getting ready to swim side by side at one of our weekly lycra dates.  I was asking him about drills I could do to improve my form and this is what he said to me: "Your form is pretty much fine; now you just need to work on your speed and endurance."  My form is okay?  Really?  God bless that man.  He has no idea how I cling to the smallest things to keep me going.