Learning to Crawl

I came to triathlon from a running background. Like most things that I've gotten myself into, my wife, Salome has often been the instigator to a new activity. She was the one several years ago who, while doing her Saturday morning long run, came across the Fort Lauderdale Sprint Triathlon in progress and said, "I bet we could do that." Like a lot of things that she initiates, I went much more hardcore into the sport.

One of the things we noted early on was that we were not in the top half of the swimming results. I always considered myself an OK swimmer, but Salome was consistently near the back of her start wave. She eventually contacted a local swim coach Gary Fahey, who goes by the moniker of "The Stroke Doctor." Unfortunately, Salome started her lessons in the dead of winter. She went to a couple of lessons, but didn't practice much due to the cold weather. She eventually postponed the remaining lessons she had paid for until after winter.

After coming in dead last out of the water in last weekend's Miami Nice sprint triathlon, Salome called Gary and arranged to have him meet us at a pool this morning. While I knew that my technique probably needed some tweaking, I had no idea that I was swimming wrong for the last 43 some odd years. Turns out I was doing a sort of balanced windmill action with my arms instead of proper arm rotation. Thus, I'm learning to crawl all over again at age 51. My only regret is that I didn't suck enough to get help sooner.

Yesterday, I rode 65 miles along A1a. It's funny how we can continue to screw ourselves on the outbound ride. How is it that we keep forgetting that an easy fast pace on the outbound probably means we are getting a wind assist that we have to pay for on the ride home. Oh, yeah, and that it gets hotter as the morning wears on.