my first mile.

It may have taken me 46 minutes, but I went my first mile ever yesterday. Swimming. On my third attempt out at lap swimming in oh... you know... about four years, I swam a mile. No complaints. I don't care that it took me so long, it felt wonderful. Like I mentioned before, I decided to hop back in the pool seeing how my hip is grumpy at running. I forgot just how much I love swimming. The instant I swim those first few strokes, I just feel at 'home.'

I've always been a water bug, I don't even remember learning to swim. Although I'm pretty sure my Grandpa taught me in our backyard pool, or maybe it was my dad. Or both. I don't know. I've just always swam. Our family loves the water, we spend a lot of time on the lake together. Skiing and swimming and playing. Being in water for me is natural. And comfortable. And far easier on my body than running.

I plan to keep up the swimming, going about twice a week. Although I'm itching to get back in the water for some laps, I'm trying to temper my desire and take it easy. It makes it that much more enjoyable when I jump in the pool. I think the reason I love it so much is because when I swim laps I get into a zone that's even more focused and far more zen than running (i rarely feel zen when running). My brain shuts off and I just.... swim. It's so relaxing. I'm not in there competing with anything but seeing how far I can go. Even swimming that mile yesterday? I felt like I could have gone two miles. And when I hopped out of the pool, my somewhat tough week had melted away.

I'm not saying this to beef myself up, at ALL. I'm just sharing how swimming makes me feel... which is wonderful. I even love the lingering smell of chlorine (despite showering after) on my skin the rest of the day. Although, maybe the ease of it just means I need to swim harder! Or maybe it just means swimming is my thing. Clearly I'm not a speedster or stellar swimmer. But I do love it. And feel like I'm a swimmer who's been trying to fit into the running world. It's just the most natural sport I've ever done, honestly. Running was never natural for me. I feel almost the same about the bike, it's more natural for me than running. But that's a different story for a different day! And yes, there is a triathlon in my very near future. I'll be dipping my cheeto-like toes into the tri world in November. With THIS GIRL, who just moved back home, by my side. BONUS. She is a seasoned triathlete, thank goodness!

And the thing is, writing about swimming and biking... well, I've always thought it was un-interesting, boring and lame. So I probably won't write about it a lot. For some reason running is more interesting to me, in regard to reading and writing about it. That's just me.

For now, I'm going to attempt my FIRST run in nearly three weeks later today. I have no idea how far I'll go, I'm just going to go run and limit myself to an hour. I do have 8 miles, part of which is a 5k, on tap tomorrow with the girls. I can't totally neglect the fact I'm running a half marathon in a week. I need to get my running legs back!