The First Day at the Swim Clinic

Today was class #1 of my triathlon swim clinic at the Y. I set my alarm to go off 10 minutes earlier than normal and I hopped out of bed as soon as it went off at 4:30. Wow, that was early..! It gave me enough time to try to wake up, get a few last minute things ready, take Finlay for a quick walk and check my e-mails. I pulled into the parking lot at the Y as soon as the doors were opening at 5:30. As soon as I walked into the changing room I felt intimidated. There was a lady wearing her Ironman Canada Finisher jacket. Apparently this wasn't just an intro to tri swimming...

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The clinic had four lanes designated for use - two for the really fast folks that are there to hammer out there workouts, and two for the newbies that need a little more instruction. Yeah, I went straight to the newbie lane. Our instructor was just starting to write up our workout on a whiteboard so I went out for the warm up - a few laps of front crawl, breaststroke and backstroke, then a few laps of your choice. I haven't done the backstroke in years...I kept swimming off course and hitting the ropes. Oops! Luckily there was only one other person in the lane with me, and she spent most of her morning chatting to a lady in the lane next to her. I only saw her swim a few laps. After that we did some laps with a pull buoy, some intervals, then some laps alternating strokes to finish things out. It was a pretty good workout. No comments on my technique so as the class progresses we'll see if the instructor offers pointers or if I need to seek them out myself. I definitely worked harder today than I have on my own though, and that felt great.