Sanctuary: Back to the Pool

Logan Aquatic Center

So, I went back to the sanctuary last night. The pool. This time I gave the Logan Aquatic Center a go. Overall. I am humbled. how grateful I am for a simple activity of swimming. While being ill the last few weeks with upper respiratory distress, getting in the water was great. I love the concept of swimming. Moving from one point to another and trying to use the water to my advantage.

Lessons learned

• 50 meters is FOREVER – no really, it’s awesomely uncomfortable
• swimming requires breathing
• Other people in the pool do their thing, I concentrate on my needs and intentions ONLY
• Swimming outside is AWESOME
• Need to locate my feel
• My hands get sloppy about 70 percent through my stroke.

Some refreshing reminders

The good things for me. Getting in the water felt familiar. My stroke wasn’t that out of whack. I was able to get right in and breathe. With the longer distance I had to rely on form, and on breathing. About 60-ish percent through I felt things get a bit sloppy tho. I need to start focusing on my stroke dynamics. I queried my Team Zoot team mates and well – It looks like I will be purchasing some paddles.

The suggestions offered to me were the following:

What kind of pool tools do you have?

• Only put your birdie finger in the slot where your fingers go and nothing else. This will help insure you are doing your stroke right. If the paddle falls off you aren’t doing it right. This will also help remind you to keep your hands in the right position
• One drill my coach had me do is to do a flick at the end. Put on some fins because your stroke rate will be slow, focus on pulling all the way through and give a little flick of water as your hand comes out the back.
•  I also really like the buoy tap drill to insure a long strong pull. You can use paddles as well as the buoy and on each stroke tap the buoy
• Make a trip to swim labs (Colorado). They’ll be able to give you real time feedback and you can implement it right there, then take the drills and use them in the pool. I’m not a great swimmer but I think their real time guidance and visual feedback is super helpful
  • This suggestion leads one to a local swim analysis space (physical or virtual) – C26 and Robbie Bruce is an option, John Farrell in TZ, or a physical space like swim labs
• Paddles!! They are the best way to build strength. I also like the drill that my coach calls “thumb to thigh” – basically let your thumb drag all the way to/along your thigh at the back end of your stroke. It forces you to not get short and use the whole stroke. It isn’t a fast drill, so take your time with it
• My coach wouldn’t let me use any aids (except fins with a kick board for kicking drills). She used a much more painful method . She rubberbanded my fingers together and then took two sharpened pencils, placed the pencil under my watch and rubber band on the other hand. The sharp part right where your palm bends. So if I bent my hands in my stroke, I would stab myself with the sharp pencil. Have to say it worked. I still think about it when I swim.
• I normally imagine throwing my hands to my knees once they pass perpendicular to the bottom – it’ll increase stroke rate and engage more of the lats.

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

Epictetus

More lessons learned in the pool:

Well last night in the pool – I was served some humble pie. Some context, I learned how to swim as a youth, didn’t swim much outside of recreational play and then dabbled in water polo. So I learned how to tread water. I’ve been involved in water sports and know how to survive.

So when I showed up to the pool 6 weeks before my first ironman event (2015 – 70.3 IM St George reflections) – I was the prime recipient for eating crow and humble pie. My first 100 yd time was over 4 mins and 30 seconds. I ‘tarzan’-ed around like a fish out of water. I’m sure people at the local pool were scared and hoping I was a one time entertainment spectacle.

All this to say, I asked for some local wisdom from my triathlon team zoot mates. I bought swim paddles. While I am sure I was entertainment to the other lap swimmers, I learned a lost last night.

I explored growth last night actively as I let go of stubbornness and let better swimming triathletes impart their lessons learned.

Juniper and Astrid are slated to learn to swim. I used dislike swimming, but it has become my sanctuary, my therapist, a lab to learn things…to the benefit of my wife and family, swimming is where I relearned to be my own friend so I can be there and my best self for them.

Even More Pool Thoughts and Triathlon

So one of the main reasons I find the pool so fulfilling is it prompts me to decompress. I really disliked and disrespected the swim at first. As my story above illustrates, I thought, incorrectly, as I observed others do as well. I could show up a few weeks out, and swim enough to survive. Well that little fumble caused me a DNF. Luckily, St George at the time let me finish the whole course. Even over time. I shudder sharing my time but it was just over 9 and half hours.

I have started multiple activity days where appropriate.  I am reminded of the “HURRY SLOWLY” concept and making sure I build my chassis correctly (shout out to Mike Tarrolly and Robbie Bruce at Crushing Iron).  While swimming last night, I was about 800 yards in and remembered I had two great swims already, and now I just needed to merely gather volume and swim correctly.  Being completely un-coached in the water other than learning how to tread water in High school for water polo, I started this journey with a lot of unreasonable expectations.  Sure, I started swimming before my first 70.3 distance with less than 60 days.  Sure I had no idea what a pull buoy was or what drills to concentrate on or what all the little things in those crazy mesh bags were.  Looking back, the only correct thing I had was, from the time I entered the water at Sand Hollow, I needed to get from point A, around the two major buoys and stay close enough to the 20 other buoys along the way.  I was to complete that under 70 minutes.  Well I failed, I completed it in 73 minutes.  Luckily I was able to continue and finish the event, and get my  butt slapped by Tim Don about 450 yards out on course and a wee bit over the overall time requirement.

https://happyinthehills.com/zentriathlete/2019-21-february-check-in/

As I look back at things I am seeing more and more about how I perceive things. The attributions I give my perceptions compared to actual realities. Example – The fumble of the swim at my first event was a raw lesson learned and a huge perceived setback. Looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, I see it better now. I am learning just how uncomfortable I am on the ‘Carousel of Comfort’ (thanks Eddie Pinero 4 that phrase). I am still learning how to fail. To be open to the concept that failure is part of the growth cycle. To pivot and leverage my gains so that I am prepared to overcome unanticipated gaps. The gaps are at time perceived and acknowledge in planning. Often they are encountered in the action process tho. The concept and availability to allow myself to practice failure was at first painful and uncomfortable. Not because of the actual fail. Rather, its perceptions of the following concepts:

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, ‘He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”

Epictitus

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own.”

Marcus Aurelius

I am definitely still learning to leverage stillness to my advantage. Not in the vein of standing still. No, more along the lines of not allowing external influences, noises or uncontrollable disruptions steal my freedom to choose. I am reacquainting myself with exercising my agency between stimulus and my response intentionally. To engage actively, instead of being acted upon. To be present which requires discipline and actively being aware to not cascade to far into analysis paralysis not grieve from not capitalizing on lessons learned from previous failures.

Years ago, circa July 2014, Liz and I took Dennis back to visit Farmville. We also visited Appomattox and a few other notable Civil War sites.

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

Seneca

Ryan holiday stated this about the Seneca quote –

A person who is a friend to themselves, Seneca wrote, “is an aid to all mankind. They are kind. They are calm. They have empathy—for themselves and for others. They aren’t desperate. They can quietly spend time alone. They don’t need to pull others down to lift themselves up. They can stand on the shoulders of giants, as Isaac Newton famously said in 1675, instead of stepping on their necks to secure advantage.”

Ryan Holiday speaking on thoughts from Seneca

As I think about death and memorializing acts similar to above , I think about this –

You may leave this life at any moment: have this possibility in your mind in all that you do or say or think.

Marcus Aurelius

What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things. For example, death is nothing dreadful (or else it would have appeared dreadful to Socrates), but instead the judgment about death that it is dreadful—that is what is dreadful. So, when we are thwarted or upset or distressed, let us never blame someone else but rather ourselves, that is, our own judgments. An uneducated person accuses others when he is doing badly; a partly educated person accuses himself, an educated person accuses neither someone else nor himself.

EPICTITUS

I know I can be better, hope others choose to follow acta non verba more too. Actions not just words. The interesting concepts of stoicism and the intersections of Christianity are indeed interesting. Now I don’t want to fall too far down the rabbit hole here, but it is interesting how certain men after the sharers of thought manipulate things. In a previous post I shared this about how I tend to wield and leverage thoughts and worldviews:

“Instead of endlessly debating about which worldview reigns supreme, I choose to take elements I admire in both traditions while constructing a philosophy about how to live, and demonstrate two heads are better than one. “

Ryan Holiday

I lean into a lot of stuff from Ryan Holiday as he has become a modern day rejuvenator and author on the Stoics. In his books he brings to life stories of ancient philosophy and wisdom. He also has daily podcast I tend to listen to as I find great value in the thoughts as i synthesize and intersect.

Life and Triathlon

Liz and I have been trying to intersect family activities with wellness and learning and just being family-focused. While we have our worldviews, we try to be amenable and tolerant of anything that crosses our way. We have asked our kiddos in the last year to be patient with us as we have assisted multiple scenarios involving folks improving themselves through their tragedies and traumas of life. We try to employ ‘Acta, Non verba’. We try to help them see directly, no matter how perfect I am, that we strive to be our best selves as often as possible. The journey Liz and I often endeavor to take is not always on the “Carousel of Comfort” and we often find ourselves on the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”:

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me, and I walk alone
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one, and I walk alone
I walk alone, I walk alone
I walk alone, I walk a-
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes, I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then, I walk alone

Liz and I talk about it from time to time, more and more lately how we often walk a lonely road. We find ourselves in deep waters. We intersect with the Carousel of Comfort at times, and often are thrown off before we are content. Our kiddos need to see that we are living more, and not just breathing and merely surviving. Our kids deserve more. We can shape more and more of that from our actions. I love that I have the opportunity to shape my attitudes and actions between stimulus and response. Instead of being controlled by some form of Artificial Intelligence. While I do tend to review and interact with any given worldview at anytime, and I try to glean the best wisdoms with tolerance and kindness, Liz and I try to take care of family first. Where we can we extend ourselves and family and help others as we are able. Sometimes we can only do this tho:

Lastly, I have really been leaning into my listens of Eddie Pinero material. He is a flawed individual just like me. I think one of the challenges in self reflection is becoming paralyzed. Either getting too stuck in the past, or too paralyzed of sorting through the options to move forward. Through many stages of my life, well before Liz, I followed some Henry Rollins type of advice:

Sometimes we have chosen well, other times we chose something that made us intersect with lessons learned – from previous experience or worse, in the moment, encountering a new unknown lesson learned.

So circling back to swimming, I use it as a place to dissect myself. It is my personal sanctuary to parse through triathlon, life and more. I turn inward, looking for lesson learned and opportunities to learn and move forward. One activity, one breath, one step at a time. I try to improve where I can. I share when asked to share. I have learned unsolicited advice rarely sticks to another person, no matter how annoying it is when I can perceive the path they are heading toward. Lastly, this Eddie Pinero compilation has really been trolling through my mind.