First swimming lesson

This picture was taken by Amber last week. I didn't get to do THIS at all today, but instead we did drills, in my very first swimming lesson ever! It was fun, and I learned a lot, which I'll share with you. In the picture, I'm pleased to see that my right shoulder is out of the water, because it's supposed to be. It's one of the only things that I taught myself properly. The first thing Amber did is have us put on flippers. Wow! What a kick (heh) you get with those babies! And then she had us swim to the other side of the pool and back five times, using a paddle board with our heads out of the water. I felt so powerful with flippers, I felt invincible!

But then she had us swim to the other side of the pool with our heads in the water, coming up to breathe on either side, with our arms pinned to our sides!! I learned two things right off: I'm MUCH more comfortable breathing on the right side, and I stop kicking when I am breathing.  Needless to say, I took on more water than I was supposed to. This took several lengths to get fairly good at. Then she had us put one arm out straight, breathing on that side, other arm pinned to my side.

What I am learning is that the crawl (or Australian crawl), which I have been doing, is the fastest way to swim, if you do it right. But I have to disconnect my head turn from my body's actions. Since I forget to kick when I breathe, it's important to return to the basics. Once I learn to kick continuously, I'll be a lot stronger. If you look at that link, there are three animations of someone doing the crawl, and I learned a lot from them, too. In short, my first lesson was very exciting, and I'll practice these techniques next time I'm in the pool.

After the swim, I went to the Farmers' Market to get some greens, and I had lunch at this new place: 22Greens. I had the Bitchen Salad, which was simply wonderful! Now I'm home and writing this post before settling down to finish my latest novel, which isn't great but I have to know what happens.
:-)