It is so cliched, yet so blinkin’ true…..time is racing faster and faster all the time. Also, the more I keep waiting for this and that to finish before I start the other, the busier it gets and the other doesn’t happen. It has made me realise that if you want something you just get on and do it and the unnecessary stuff will just have to fall by the way side.
It’s a bit like that with swimming training. There are always 20 other things I could do rather than go to the pool for an hour, OK perhaps an hour and a half by the time I have a chat, but none of those things would make me feel as good afterwards as a swim. The house may be tidied, but will get messy again as soon as the boys get home; shopping done but there is always something I forget and have to go back again the next day anyway; sorted out the office and written that blog I have been meaning to write for weeks (yes this one!) but more work then needs doing and the subject of the next blog needs some thought so soon after.
With swimming it’s like saving in a piggy bank. Each time I go I get to put some more in the piggybank, a china one that you can’t take the money out of without breaking! Nobody can take that effort away from me, and when I go again next time I would have improved.
We did a timed 400 swim at the end of January for a few Swimming Women and every one of them had improved fantastically some by over a minute per 200!!! How did they do it? Sure they possibly executed the drills well and it helped their stroke but the biggest factor was because they have been swimming regularly. Sometimes on their own, sometimes with friends and Swimming Women they had been regularly putting money into that piggybank and the rewards have paid off. Even after a break over Christmas they are still faster than they were 4 months ago.
So the essence of this blog is that sometimes you just have to get on with it, pack your bathers and rock up at the pool, even if you think you should be doing other things and I promise that over time, regularly swimming will reap the rewards…and those other 20 things are still there to be done…just a little bit quicker and with a feel good factor that I have done something for me today!