She often was in the water for eight to 12 hours daily, resting one day per week.

Swimming 8-12 hours a day?! Eff that ess. I’d flail around for an hour, say “Screw this,” and drag my sodden ass out of the river to go get some frozen custard. (Speaking of which, the swimmer celebrated the completion of her journey with ice cream and a beer, which I wholeheartedly endorse, but also with a veggie burger. Really, a veggie burger? Swimming 981 miles should require you to celebrate with at least a couple tons of animal flesh, even if you are a vegetarian.)

I can only imagine that Ms. Hughes emerged from her 12 hours a day, 2 month-long swim looking something like this:

It’s a prune, in case my ghetto Photoshop skills aren’t clear

She did swim in the Ohio River, so I’m guessing she had to dodge quite a bit of discarded LeBron James merchandise. As much as I hate all things Ohio, at least she didn’t attempt her feat in the Detroit River. If she did, she’d likely have emerged depressed, gunshot, and looking for a bailout.

Lesson learned: If you have to share a lane with someone, make sure you hop in when he or she isn’t at the same end as you. Also, getting the swimmer’s attention and letting him/her know that you’re going to be sharing is a plus. (I recommend whacking the swimmer in the head with a water noodle, or maybe dipping your toe into the water and going “Yoo hooooooooo.” Or maybe not.)

Scenario #2: Sharing a Lane
Scenario #2 occurred when Jason and I arrived at the public pool near our house to do a swim workout. We showed up after work, so the pool was pretty packed. There were four lanes available: Easy, Medium, Fast, and Very Fast. The Easy lane had 2 swimmers in it and the other lanes had 4. Logically, Jason and I opted to go into the Easy lane because it was the least crowded. (Also, we’re slow swimmers. Don’t you judge us.)

We started our workout and eventually the woman in our lane left, leaving us with an overweight older man sporting baggy red swim trunks, gigantic goggles and some ridiculous pool accessories. His workout consisted of “running” up and down the lane, and he was quickly getting irate that Jason and I were swimming and constantly passing him. He got so irritated that he stopped at one end of the pool, glared at us for a few laps, and finally resorted to complaining to the lifeguard that we were swimming too fast for the Easy lane. Yeah, that’s right, Jason and I got tattled on by an old man who was jazzercizing during lap swim.

As expected, the lifeguard shrugged at the dude as if to say, “What the hell do I care?” Unsatisfied, the man waited until we swam back to his end and started whining to us about how we’re swimming too fast, dagnabbit! (If he had a cane he would have shook it at us.) Jason pointed out to him that this lane was by far the least crowded and that it’s not fair for him to hog a lane to himself just because he’s excruciatingly slow. They continued to argue back and forth (but thankfully refrained from angrily splashing each other), with the man eventually challenging Jason to guess how old he was. Jason’s response, logically, was “I don’t see how that matters.” Our swimming companion countered that he was sixty-something years old, and I’m not sure if we should have been impressed that such a “geezer” was doing a swim workout, guilted into respecting our elders and giving him the lane, or what. We kind of just stared at him until he finished his tirade and left the pool.

Lesson learned: If it’s lap swim hours and you’re using that time to NOT SWIM LAPS, you shouldn’t get pissed when actual swimmers who need to do a workout have to share with you (and repeatedly pass your non-buoyant ass).

Scenario #3: Infringing on Someone Else’s Space
I had the following conversation with my friend Matt over Gmail chat:

Matthew: last night at the pool there was a wait
so the protocol is you put your name on the whiteboard and you start waiting
and then as lanes free up you remove your name

Me: the pool had a wait?
you don’t share lanes?
what the hell

Matthew: nope, no splitting lanes. anyway, i ended up showing at the exact time that like 4 people started their swims
so I had to wait for like 25 minutes for a lane

Me: aw

Matthew: so as soon as my lane opened up, this fat old lady with giant space goggles walks out of the dressing room and plops into my lane
and begins to “water walk”

Me: hahaha
“Ooh, I’m really movin’ now!”

Matthew: so I walked over and said “you’re in my lane, that’s the whiteboard, it’s my turn, out you go!”

Me: haha, nice

Matthew: and she said “well the lane next to this one should open up soon”
so I just stared at her in silence for like 15 seconds until she got out of my lane and proceeded to go into the lane next to it
which had a swimmer in it doing laps

Me: did he get mad?

Matthew: he stopped swimming and told her to get out of his lane
so she went into the lane next to that one
which ALSO had swimmers
it was pretty funny

Me: geez

Matthew: you think she’d get the fucking idea and get out of the pool
and go sit in the hottub and wait like everyone else

Me: so how many lanes did she get kicked out of

Matthew: well, she finally got into open swim
which is the end of the pool that’s full of fatties with large goggles
so she was reunited with the herd
like a whale lost in the bering sea

Me: meeting back up with its pod
did she jump over a kid standing on a wall pumping his fist in the air?

Matthew: FREE FATTTYY
yeah, pretty much
normally i’m not one to make fun of someone’s weight
but if you steal my lane, i’m gonna insult your weight

Lesson learned: If your pool has certain rules, you need to abide by them. Also refer back to Scenario #2’s lesson about being respectful to actual swimmers doing an actual swim workout. Oh, and finally, don’t piss off Matt when he’s swimming or he’ll insult your weight.

I don’t know what it is about swimming, but it feels like every other swim I have goes terribly. One day I’ll have what I think is a good swim. I’ll get in the pool and feel pretty good and think, “I could swim and swim and swim forever!” Then, no joke, the next time I get in the pool I’ll be gasping for air after 4 lengths and flailing my legs like a fool. My shoulder will ache, I’ll swallow roughly a gallon of questionable YMCA water, and I’ll dejectedly watch some a-hole flying back and forth in the lane next to me, doing his fancy flip turns in his one-size-too-small Speedo. (How on earth he glides through the water aerodynamically with those plum smugglers dangling is beyond me.)

And don’t get me started on the actual technique. There are at least a dozen things you have to remember to do with your body when you’re swimming. My mind keeps racing and I can barely keep track of it all. When I’m swimming, I’m thinking, “Head down. Don’t look at the ceiling when you breathe. Don’t windmill your arms. Fingers together. High elbows. Do a good ‘catch.’ Finish your damn stroke! Push! Turn on your side. Reach out. No, further. Small kicks — from the hips. Don’t bend your knees. Keep your legs up. Abs tight. Oh, breathe. Breathe!” I’m not coordinated enough to prevent myself from running into corners or tripping up stairs, let alone remembering (and sustaining) 50 swimming tips while I’m flailing in the water. If I focus on my legs, my arms get all stupid. If I’m conscious of improving my catch, my legs go all crooked. It’s like my limbs react oppositely to each other.

So yeah, swimming is bullshit. Pool swimming is stupid, open water swimming is really stupid, and dry land swim conditioning classes are uber-stupid (and make my triceps all hurty). I hate it, and yet I subject myself to it a few times a week. Why? Because I am stubborn. Because I begrudgingly want to get faster and look like less of a spazz when I swim. Because one day I’d like to be better than a mediocre athlete. And because there’s no good way to cheat at swimming (scuba gear ain’t exactly subtle), so I guess I’m just going to have to learn. I know, bullshit, isn’t it?

I’m pretty sure our first swim was only 1200 meters, but somehow we managed to drag the ordeal out for almost an hour. In hindsight, I appreciate the fact that the lifeguards were able to keep their laughter to themselves. We both swam with our heads almost entirely out of the water, feet dragging under the surface, gasping for air with every single stroke. It was an exhausting ordeal, and quickly became apparent that we should probably seek out some guidance and try to hone our technique prior to our first race.

Over the next twelve weeks we participated in a triathlon swim training class at the Seattle Athletic Club that helped provide us with some basic technique, and took us from being humiliatingly awful swimmers to just being competently poor. During that time we practiced sighting, breath control, and even some simulated group starts. So, as we continued to practice my confidence slowly grew.

Here’s where it’s important to note the two distinctly different approaches Rebecca and I take with regard to our training. Where she tends to be extremely hard on herself and constantly question whether or not she is going to be able to accomplish something, I typically inflate myself into believing that if someone else can do it then so can I. As a result, in the weeks leading up to the race she had wisely decided to get in a couple of open water swims with our training group while I had come up with some excuses and quickly rationalized that “swimming is swimming.”

Fast forward to the day of my first race, the Issaquah Sprint Triathlon. We arrive at the race with plenty of time to setup our transition area. Rebecca and I were both fairly nervous because it was our first race, and I was suddenly becoming concerned about the fact that despite all of the in-pool training, I hadn’t done a single open water swim. However, after surveying the 400 meter course I was able to calm myself by talking through how ludicrously close each of the buoys looked to the shore. “400 meters is nothing,” I told myself. “I can do this in my sleep, open water or not.”

I confidently made my way into the water and prepared for my age group’s start. The gun goes off and I am swimming like I’m in the anchor leg of a 50 meter relay. It’s an all out effort the likes of which I’ve never put forth and I’m in the middle of a strong pack. Unfortunately, amidst my race day excitement and foolish bravado I’ve forgotten that I am NOT a very strong swimmer, and as my lungs begin to give out a sense of panic starts to set in. “What the hell was I thinking?” Now not only am I getting run over by everyone smart enough to go out at a sustainable pace, but I am also one-hundred-percent convinced I’m going to die before I round the first buoy. Somehow I manage to talk myself out of waving frantically for the nearest kayak and calling my first outing a “valiant effort,” and instead awkwardly paddle forward in a modified head above water crawl stroke so terrible looking that a kayaker still stops to ask me “are you okay?”

As I round the first buoy, probably not more than 50 meters in, I’m relieved to find that miraculously there are still a few people behind me. I now settle in for the long stretch parallel to the shore and decide that in order to regain my breath I am going to do the backstroke for a minute or two. So, for the next couple of minutes I transform into one of those zig-zagging d-bags that are almost universally despised (and that I would grow to hate in later races). I settle into a comfortable pace and am congratulating myself on not only regaining my composure but on almost being done with the swim when I hear some guy shouting “Hey!” Not wanting to ruin my flow by looking around I continue undeterred. But, upon hearing a second and much louder shout just a few seconds later I decide to see what is going on. I stop for a second to give an irritated look at the kayaker that has been trying to disrupt my mojo and notice he’s pointing in a totally different direction. Somehow in my swimmin’ groove I’d failed to sight the buoy and was now about 50 meters off course. Ugh.

So, I decide to bag the whole backstroke idea and go back to a more sensibly paced crawl for the remainder of the swim. The rest of the swim is pretty much a blur, as my internal voice kept wavering between a frustrated “I am such an idiot” and the more inquisitive “how could I be so stupid?” After what seemed like hours, but was actually a little under 12 minutes (still pathetic, I know), I emerged from the water looking like a defeated man and angrily trotted toward my easy-to-find bicycle looking incredibly lonely on its rack.

I hear this is how you're supposed to look when you come out of the water.

However, from my embarrassing amount of mistakes I was able to glean a couple of valuable lessons. 1) There is no substitute for practice, and 2) Stay focused on racing your own race. Following this disaster, I tried to get in as many open water swims prior to the next race, and quickly became more comfortable with the mass starts, pacing myself, and staying (relatively) on course. Although the end results have only been marginally better, they have been overwhelmingly less stressful.

I do still hate swimming, but take some comfort in knowing at least I was able to weather the initial storm and can forever brag about how I didn’t drown without even rounding the first buoy.

Teresa teaches the swim conditioning class, and for good reason. She swam for the University of Nevada-Reno and is one fast mofo. My triathlon trainer is often the first female out of the water during races, and she was the fastest female swimmer in her age division at the Kona World Championships. She is pretty much twice as fast as me in the water. It’s depressing. I remember that for my first open water swim she gave me like a 5 minute head start before swimming after me, and she and I got to the buoy at the same time. Sigh.

Anyway, I signed up for an hour of interval bike training and then did the swim conditioning class immediately afterwards. I’m not that hungry in the mornings so all I had to eat before working out was 3/4 of a Kashi Go Lean bar and some water. By the end of my dual workout I was ready to devour a mid-size farm animal.

Betsy was my swim conditioning buddy that morning. We started by squatting down and chucking a huge weighted ball back and forth to each other, then we did about 40 triceps dips. After more ball passes and a second set of dips I was already feeling the dreaded jell-o arm effect…and we were only about 10 minutes into the workout. Oh God, I was in trouble.

Let me pause and show you roughly what my triceps look like:

I have the arm strength of a feeble cartoon octogenarian, and every exercise during this class was exploiting them with sadistic, unrelenting glee.

Teresa made me get on the Vasa trainer, where I repeatedly failed to properly pull my arms back in the “catch” position. My wimpy arms were quivering under the teeny amount of weight Teresa had given me. After I half-assed about 20 reps, I switched with Betsy and dejectedly watched her adjust the tension and hammer out a ton of swim strokes with perfect form. I wish I had Betsy’s triceps. But I don’t. I have Mr. Burns-esque triceps.

After 45 minutes of non-stop triceps abuse, I headed home to shower and get ready for work. I knew I’d be in trouble when I could already feel the soreness of my arms a couple hours after the class ended. Sure enough, the next day I felt like Ralphie’s brother from A Christmas Tale, only instead of not being able to put my arms down, I couldn’t raise them more than halfway. I was rockin’ John McCain arms the entire weekend. Showering was hell, pulling my hair back was hell, rolling on deodorant was hell, changing shirts was hell. Jason quickly got tired of hearing my agonized shrieks whenever he’d try to hug, squeeze, or otherwise vaguely touch my arms and lats:

[Jason and I are laying on the couch watching TV. He adjusts his weight and brushes up against my arm.]
Me: “Aghhhhhhh, don’t do that!”
Jason: “What?”
Me: “You hit me!”
Jason: “I barely touched you!”
Me: “Well it hurt! Don’t do that!”
Jason: “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Me: “Seriously, I am so sore…so, you’re coming to the class with me next week, right?”

You know how some people are like “I love feeling sore after a workout! It’s so satisfying!”? Well, I’m all for post-workout soreness but this was just obscene. Seriously. Friends don’t let friends get that sore. (I’m looking in your direction, Teresa.) Anyway, even though I got my ass kicked and my wimpy arms got bitch-slapped left and right, I’m determined to take the class every week to strengthen up and hopefully shave some minutes off my swim time. If nothing else then at least maybe I’ll be able to do a frickin’ pull up by the end of the season (wanna help me with that, T?).