. . . In other news, my legs are beyond worthless when I swim. It’s been ages since I swam with a pull buoy (which you put between your thighs for flotation and to move all of the effort to your upper body), but I used one this morning at the pool. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my time over 100 yards was consistently 10 seconds faster when I didn’t use my legs. Those ten seconds might not sound like much, but they turn into more than three minutes over a mile, which is a big deal.
And just to prove the “My Legs Are Anchors” point, I also used a kickboard this morning for the first time. Those 50 yards were so slow and not pretty. Not at all. I’m very glad there were only three of us at the pool for most of the morning, so that no one got to see my shame.
Well, tomorrow is a brand new day. Hopefully, Patricia the Swim Instructor will whip me into shape. I’ll be channeling my inner Céline for sure.
Slower with the legs than without?! What kind of sense does that make?
If we could do some sort of body merge you would be an expert swimmer! My arms are practically pointless when I swim but my kicks are awesome!
Just keep swimming!
I hear you dah’lin! I was the world’s worst kicker when I started. In fact I kept forgetting to kick and my legs would just kinda dangle uselessly behind me. With the kick board, I was the slowest in our group and totally mortified as people lapped me. Then, after a few weeks of struggling, my running legs seemed to figure it out and I ‘got it’. I now lap other people and even beat the instructor in a 50m kick race!
Have hope – you’ll totally get there.