My Year Of Swimming Dangerously –Part 2

When I left you, I was in angst about how I would swim 365 miles that year having just shown up in England where there were no pools to be found.

What was this going to do to my goal?  I remember seeing only one pool while I was in England and strangely, I didn’t want to get into it.  I think it was my way of avoiding the issue of whether or not I was going to fail or succeed in reaching this magical number.  When I returned from the trip, I had a little over 2 months to get those last 64 miles in and I was convinced I could still reach my goal.  So with what I perceived as renewed vigor and determination, I returned to the pool to continue my quest.  Now, my pool wasn’t open everyday, so I knew I would have to factor that into my calculations.  So I decided to increase the distance I would swim each time I was able to swim.  At first, it didn’t seem so bad.  But then little by little, things started to creep in. Such as, how annoyed I got when I had to go to a funeral and miss my swim.  Or the day I decided to swim 3 miles straight without stopping.  What was I thinking? I almost threw up when I climbed out of the pool.  Or the time the lifeguard stopped my swim halfway through because of lightning.  Lightning!  I’ve got my goal to accomplish, who cares if I’m struck by lightning and die?  Do I have to tell you that those last 2 months of 2005 were miserable?  I would wake up in the morning and absolutely resent having to go to the pool, AGAIN!  I told myself, “Don’t ever give yourself a goal like this EVER”!  I felt physically and mentally fatigued. After every swim, I’d note it in the journal and divide days left by miles still to go and sometimes I wondered how it would end.  Again, something to wrap my inner negative voice around.  Well, it did end. And I’m here to report I did reach my goal. In fact, I blew through it.  412.50059 miles to be exact.  But I was left with a bad taste in my mouth about swimming.  I wasn’t as happy as I thought I’d be about doing what I had set out to do because the price of it had become all too consuming.  And it showed.  In the years that followed, I had fewer and fewer trips to the pool.  Only 100 miles in 2007 for example.  So I’d learned a lesson about goals.  Which was, don’t be arbitrary when it comes to setting them.  Think carefully about what it will take to accomplish it.  And I know it comes as no surprise to you that I’ve never set another swimming goal.  I didn’t want to feel so bad about something so good.

And now we come to the present day.  A day you may be surprised to hear that I swam my 441th mile of the year and it’s the final week of December 2011. What happened you ask?  I can only tell you that I kept that promise to myself to never set another goal and I didn’t.  And what returned due to keeping that promise was the joy I felt when I did swim.  So on many days, I would swim in the morning and then again in the evening.  I loved it!  Again.

This story is not meant to squash the value of goals.  It can be motivating and fun to set goals.  I share this story because so many of us experience that negative self talk which I was hearing louder and louder as I was reaching for a brass ring, rather than just enjoying the moment.  I enjoy the moments again.  My body, soul and especially my mind, thank me for that.

I wish you a very Happy New Year 2012 and I hope that you find some movement that you love and set up your goals coming from a place of self-love rather than guilt or pain.

My Year Of Swimming Dangerously –Part 1

As an ongoing student of the OnePinky philosophy, I wanted to share a recent insight I had into the mind/body/soul connection and how it affects the goals we make for ourselves in our continuing journey to be the best we can be.  As we approach the beginning of another “New Year”, I hope my reflections will resonate with you and perhaps even help you have an easier time keeping those “resolutions”.  

In 2001, I weighed 200 pounds and was not making any time for real activity in my life.  So I decided I would go back to doing something I loved.  And what I loved was swimming.  Since I had grown up on a riverbank, swimming was something I began at an early age and took to it like, well, like a fish to water.  While I was never on a swim team, I became a fitness swimmer in 1980.  I would swim for several years, then not swim for several years, and then pick it up again.  Off and on spanning 2 decades. So in 2001 when I was itching to go back to the pool, it helped that swimming was a great activity for someone who was carrying some extra weight, as the water provides buoyancy for added comfort and ease.  And it’s also a great equalizer.  I would often swim faster and farther than other swimmers who looked like they had just stepped out of a catalog for swimwear.  I’ll never forget the day I was soaking in the hot tub after my swim and a personal trainer who was wearing a 2-piece and does not have a 6 pack, SHE HAS AN 8 PACK, walked over to me and said, “You are an awesome swimmer!”.  She was right. I am.  I knew in that moment I had rediscovered something that I did not want to stop doing as I had done in the past.  So I bought some journals and I started logging every swim I did.  What I noticed was each year I would swim a little farther than the year before.  So at the beginning of 2005, I set a goal for myself.  I would swim 365 miles that year.  After all, I had logged 330 miles in 2004, so how hard could it be?  Well, what I didn’t realize was, I didn’t have a preset goal in my head those other years and therefore I had no pressure on myself to reach a magic number.  And what ended up happening was my existence over the course of that year became all about reaching, as I called it, “My Mile Per Day Year”.  I had no idea of the effect this seemingly simple challenge was about to have on me.  Halfway through the year, I had already logged just over 200 miles so the goal seemed very attainable. But something was looming on the horizon that was about to twist my psyche into a knot.  I was planning my first trip to London in October, which would last 3 weeks.  3 weeks I thought, without a pool.  

Please stay tuned to Part 2 of this blog (coming next week) to find out if I make my goal and hear how I made it through England without a pool.                

The answer is revealed now…Kathleen shares the rest of her story…and how swimming makes her heart sing.

(for those of you who have no idea what I am referring to, go back and read yesterday’s post on Day 70, OnePinky Student Shines, Part 1.

Kathleen went off to her beloved pool and started her swim.  It’s her practice to check her watch starting with the first lap so she gets an idea of what kind of pace she’s on.  She noticed right off the bat that she was about 2 seconds faster that normal.  She then checked her watch at the 6-lap mark and again noticed a lower time than usual.  That’s when she thought she might have a very good swim that night.  By the time Kathleen made it to the half-mile point, she realized that it was actually possible, if she kept up this pace, and didn’t lose focus, that she could indeed break the 30 minute mark.  She swam that last half-mile repeating to herself, “Seize The Day” and “Eyes on the Prize”.  When she finally made it to the end and reached up to stop her timer, she was rewarded with the number 29:55.  She was proud and happy that she had achieved something that had once seemed so out of reach.

As I said earlier, Kathleen swims mainly for the joy of it.  She feels she will never give up swimming again (On her business card, under her name, it says “swimmer”).  And that her commitment to it, in spite of the fact that she’s not as fast as she was 20 years ago, rewarded her with a sense of accomplishment that will never go away.

So swim on Kathleen…I am so proud of you. :):)

And to all of us, move today in honor and reverence for our bodies. They matter, they count and they deserve to be moved and stretched.

As I always like to say, we came out of the womb kicking and moving.

The body knew what it wanted and needed right at birth.

Sending you Peace, Love and Movement.

XO, Laura

Love reading about your progress, realizations with Mum, your feeling your feelings and owning your power and your age!

Speaking of owning her power and her age, OnePinky member Kathleen has some great wisdom to share with us all.

Here it goes, enjoy!

Today I’d like to write about commitment and how it can reward us at unexpected times.  You may recall OnePinky Kathleen, who spent the day in September as a caddie at Pebble Beach.  She has maintained an 80 pound weight loss for 4 years now.  One of the things Kathleen loves to do is swim.  As a child, she was never on a swim team but she took it up in 1980 when she was 28.  She always does the same swim, 1 mile freestyle, because she loves giving it her best effort for such a precise distance.  Over the years, she has kept a journal of her swim times and as you can imagine, her times in the 80’s were her fastest.  In fact, she completely gave up swimming from 1989 until 2001 before the pool beckoned her back.  And while the joy of swimming had returned for Kathleen, her swimming times had not.  Her best time for a mile in the 80’s was 27:45.  Today on a good day, she was lucky to break 32 minutes.  In fact, that day in 2001 when she did her first mile in years, it took her 47 minutes.   Kathleen was convinced that she could never come close to her previous swim times.  But that really wasn’t the point.  The point was, that she had rediscovered something that she loved doing which was also very good for her body, mind, and soul.  So her swim times became secondary.  Then one day, she noticed her times started to drop.  Just a little, and then a little more. Kathleen told me that she has actually said to herself many times, “I will NEVER break the 30 minute mark.”

But a funny thing happened this past Monday….

Stay tuned to tomorrow.

XO, Laura