At my tri club, we have three swim sessions per week. We get to use six lanes in the pool, so the beginners swim on lane 1, the fastest guys on lane 6, and the rest of us on the other lanes, according to ability.
When I started regular swimming, some four years ago, lane 1 was the natural starting point. I quickly worked my way up to lane 2 and within eight months I was on lane 3. Fast forward three years and I'm still swimming on lane 3! Sure I made some improvements, especially the first three years, but the other guys improved as well so there has not been any reason to promote me any further. And now that we have a swim coach who seems to believe that butterfly and backstroke are of utter importance for triathletes, I'm actually facing the danger of being relegated back to lane 2. The thing is, when I try butterfly, Pamela Anderson, David Hasselhoff and all the other lifeguards are put on alert and better start looking for their red swimwear because there is a real danger at hand. After each pool length I got more water than air in my lungs, and I usually have to safe my life by turning to breaststroke the last few feet. Alarmingly, since this backstroke and butterfly was introduced into our program, my improvement in the freestyle has stopped. What fool was I to think that the whole purpose of waking up at 4:50 AM to go swimming was to improve my performance in triathlons and aquathlons!
I have tried to be positive; tried to convince myself that this will be good for me in the long run, you know, give me a better position in the water, better feeling for the water or something. But in my heart I just don't believe it. It's funny, though, that this should bug me that much, because usually I'm not a very competitive person. I'm most often at the back of the pack when it comes to racing and that doesn't bother me too much. But for some reason, this swim thing is making me extremely frustrated. There have been moments when I have seriously considered whether I should stop swimming with the group and start studying videos and books in order to make my own program and start training independently. However, knowing myself, this is a bad idea for two reasons: 1- I would miss the company, as for me the social aspect of the early morning swim sessions is probably just as important, or more so, as the actual training. And 2-I'm pretty sure that if I was going to do this on my own, reading books about swimming and studying videos would soon be taking all the time I have available for swimming, so there would be no time for actually getting wet!
Conclusion: I will continue to endure the butterfly, knowing that what really counts is to survive each session and get into the hot pot where me and my buddies easily solve all the world's problems.
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