Das Ist Kein Kindergeburtstag!

I know, you expected to find an account about my computrainer from last Saturday for today's post. But that will have to wait for another day, since I wanted to share a handful of revelations that I had this morning (before 8AM) and I am all about sharing in a timely manner, if feasible.

Today is Tuesday and Tuesday is 6am swim class day (so is Thursday). Being in the pool somewhere around 6am means that the alarms goes off that 5am. I always pack my bag and food for those days the night before, so I basically just have to get out of bed, throw on some clothes and head out.

I slept really bad Monday night and last night was not much better. So when the alarm went off, I felt like I got hit by a wall of bricks. I was soooooooo close to just skip the class. I already reset my alarm to 6am, then tried to go back to sleep only to find myself obsessing about where to squeeze in this swim later on. At 5.15am I got up since I was wide awake by then.

By 6.10am I was at the pool. Not in the pool, but sitting at the pool. The water was COLD! The coach walked by and said "Du musst rein springen! Das ist kein Kindergeburtstag!" (You have to jump in! This is not a child's birthday!"). I am always surprised when she talks German and it always takes me a minute to even register in my head that she did. We joked around a little about the phrase about the "child's birthday" and how this one doesn't make any sense in English whatsoever. The basic meaning is: we are not here for fun, there is no playing around. And heck, I was playing around a lot sitting on the side of the pool. It was time to get in there.

The centerpiece of today's workout was a 10x100 draft practice. For that we were put in groups of 2 to 3 people and alternated easy and hard sets while I was leading the easy efforts and the boys the hard efforts. Yes, I was thrown into a lane with the big boys again in order to push my limits which eventually should make me faster, even if it hurts a little sometimes. All in all this was a very productive workout that I would have never been able to do on my own since you need somebody else to practice drafting with. What still takes me some getting used to when drafting, is the touching of the feet and getting touched at the feet by other people. But in order to get the most benefit of drafting, this is just as close as you need to get.

So what were the early morning revelations?

• You will never regret the workouts you did! Heck yes, it was hard to get out of bed, but I was very happy that I did afterwards.
• Sometimes you do a workout and really feel like you accomplished something.... Without sounding too dramatic, but it's like a breakthrough at times.
• Pushing the limits of your abilities makes you better.
• Sometimes I need somebody that pushes me to push my limits! (Thanks Coach!)
• After drafting off for the last two sets of 100's, the water feels so much harder to swim through when it's your turn to lead again.

But now for real... Tomorrow the report about my first computrainer experience!

So long! ;-)