Sometimes you meet and exceptional person, or have an exceptional experience. Those moments leave a mark.
When you review/debrief those cases, one important step is to list the things that make them exceptional and the location of the demarcation line from the normal. After that you can decide what parts of the exception you want to carry with you to make yourself less normal, and what parts you leave behind to be like everyone else.
Jumped into the lap pool last night for the first time in almost a week, which is a long time for me. Since a now-healed leg injury in May I’ve swum three to four times a week.
I’m working the drills from Total Immersion Swimming and like any new thing, it’s sometimes frustrating going.
Not last night: last night I “got it” for the first time. I had a good stretch of 4-5 laps where I KNOW I looked and felt just like the dude in the videos: Arm entry was smooth, my elbow didn’t make a ker-spashing cannon-ball sound next to my ear as it entered the water, and I glided between strokes. Even my breathing felt smoother and less desperate.
I took about a 40 minute session with lots of breaks and no real goals, other than to work my weaknesses. I’d do a skate drill, then move to switch. If that went well, I’d move to continuous switch.
I worked out my breathing problem: I discovered that I was pulling my lead arm to soon in an effort to breath sooner, but what I was really doing was removing my stability for taking the breath. Holding the arm in place for just a beat longer made a huge difference. Plus it acts as a stabilizer for my other hand entering the water, and that reduced the elbow-sploosh.
Ze Frank is living the kind of brave, creative life I aspire to. I have really enjoyed discovering his work, through a video recommendation by CGP Grey, who also comes highly recommended. Ze’s videos are at wonderful, funny, thoughtful and at times brutally honest about the trials of living. I know he’s not fearless, because he constantly reminds viewers that he’s not. But he is what fearlessness looks like to me.
For what it’s worth, I’m not looking to change careers, but I still think I, and most people, need to live more creatively, instead of just accepting the life that’s being sold to them.
We have a budding running group here in Seguin, and the 2nd Saturday of the month is an open run. I’ve been training with a coach (thanks Rick) for a couple weeks and today was my first fast run since I’ve connected up with him. I went out with the goal of 7min miles, which is a minute faster than my previous 5k pace. I did well, especially early on, but a combination of started too fast and maybe just not quite having the legs yet (or the guts?), left me bonking at the end. As a first go, I’m really satisfied. It was a hair under 3 miles according to my Garmin, and 3 miles exactly according to Rick, who laid out the course. So my Garmin doesn’t recognize it as my fastest 5k.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/297376805#
Oh well, I didn’t get into this running thing for the numbers. But they sure are alluring.
(I installed a widget that shows the run, although currently I’m not sure how it decides which runs to show.)