mojo

I am a self proclaimed swim slacker. Because I come from a collegiate swimming career I declared myself retired from butterfly, and I like to caboose the lane. It does not take a whole lot of effort for me to swim a 30 minute 1.2 mile swim or a sub 60 minute Ironman swim. I am content with a 1:01 even.

Last week at the Postal swim I giggled my was through yardage that was.... well, call me a damn swim snob, but beneath me. When you drop 5 entire seconds off your 50 yard split during the last 5 minutes of the swim .... you might be called a slacker. Every few months I declare my swim slackerness over. I have to admit it, swimming is easy for me and I take it for granted as evidenced by a lot of swim results that could be better.

I complained to my swim buddy Ken that I am just too darn complacent in the water, and I wish I had that old swim mojo back. I could use those extra 2 or 3 minuets in the shorter events.

He declared that I wold be leading the Stud lane on Friday if it meant I wore fins. Eeeks, I thought. That means business.

So I led two sets today. It was pace day. The first was a kick set with fins. I am not a good kicker but I did it and ... I didn't die. That made me smile. I led the stud lane and didn't die.

At the end I led 10 X 100 on the pace we need to hold for our goal 500 yard free. These were on 1:55 so you had time to push and had time for rest. It kinda felt like taper week :-)

I wore the fins but let me tell you, fins don't make things easier when you look over and Mark, the 96 Olympic Trialist is next to you for a 50. It gives you a glimmer of greatness. My goal became to never let him beat me by more than 4 seconds on these 100's. Now Mark can open a gap of 8 seconds on anyone during a 50.... if and when he chooses to.... he's that fast..... (SICK), so this was a reachable yet difficult goal at the same time.

And I did it. I got tired.... who doesn't when they are busting their ass..... but as I got tired I felt the fire inside of me burn. That good old swimmers fire where you work so hard in the pool and no one knows and no one cares but the people you are in the water with. When you kind of hope you make it to the shallow end because if you pass out or start to at least you can stand. The kind of hard work where it is tempting to have a tea party in the deep end because when you are that spent you don't believe your coach can actually see through the water and will never notice.

Although each time I hit the wall I was recovered enough to do it again. THANKYOUREST! The effort and the taste was just enough to make me start to once again dream of leaving my swimmer slacker status behind.

So thanks to Ken, for holding me accountable. That's sometimes what we need isn't it? It's one thing when we are accountable to ourselves, another story when we are accountable to another person. Depending on the person and the situation it can work in either direction. In this case my swimmer past didn't care, but I cared when someone else told me to care.

So I am stating it here and stating it now. Mary Eggers' swim slacker days are over.