The first half of 2015 has welcomed many lovely lasses to the swimming women fold and I have really enjoyed working with these swimmers to help them find their ‘relaxed’ place when swimming, which in turn has really seen them improve.
In wanting to encourage them to keep going I was thinking of a goal each could aim for. For many of these lasses the thought of setting a goal to swim to Rottnest or around the Busselton Jetty is a few too many strokes away (at the moment). Plus, as my husband says, “everybody doesn’t have to do an event Charlotte just because you like doing them!”
It got me thinking about the reasons we all swim. For some it is the social contact of exercising with people, some need to swim as they can’t run anymore or are recovering from injury, others want to race and enter an event and there are those who come for the fitness and because they enjoy it for what it is.
I have always struggled to do anything unless I have a goal at the end of it, something that if I don’t put the training in I will fail at and therefore I cannot avoid the training. I always wondered how these people that just swim because its what they do find the interest to keep going.
This term, with no event to train for, I have tried to do just that. When someone asks me what I am training for now I reply “for Life”. There is no failure to be afraid of anymore. There are good and bad sessions, but the journey of what I will think of or see during my workout and the post exercise endorphin party are actually working to keep me wanting more.
I have realised it doesn’t matter what your reason to exercise is, friendship, fitness, mental health, or a big event. All of those things are part of our lives and quite simply there is no better reason to exercise than for life. We only have one life. Live it. Enjoy it. Swim.