Olympic Swimmer

I am exhausted today! I feel asleep grading after school, sitting up! When I jerked myself awake, I decided I should take a little nap. I set the alarm on my phone and took a nap right there on my desk. I was really hoping no one would walk in and thankfully no one did! I contribute all of this to my adventure last night. Last night Laura and I went to swim laps with Layne, Lana’s friend. He is a really good coach and taught us a lot. Laura and I were all decked out in our swim caps and goggles. We looked awesome. After two laps (down and back) I was exhausted! I had worked-out the night before and had focused on my arms. So when I started swimming I realized just how tired my arms were.

There were many hysterical moments last night. One of the best came when Layne said to me, “Do you plug your nose with your lip?” Ummmm…maybe. How did he see that! Plugging my nose with my top lip is one of my little secrets. I had thought about telling him but then I thought I would just keep it to myself. Well, he noticed! It was throwing off my breathing and how I move my head when I breathe. So to try and fix it, he made me do a couple of things.
First he made me go upside down under water and just blow water out of my nose. I was afraid I would drowned without using my trusting lip under my nose, so I held onto the side of the pool and just ducked my head under. Then he made me put my arms at my side and push off the wall. He told me I had to swim half a lap. The only way I could keep myself afloat was to kick really hard! Keep in mind that my arms were at my side this whole time. So there I am, kicking fiercely, trying to stay afloat when of course I have to breathe. (Layne had been telling me to not pull my head so far out of the water each time I breathe, so I was determined to do it this time.) Well when I went to breath I was still a little too far under water and well, you guessed it, breathed in all water!
I came up quite quickly, choking on water and Layne asked me what had happened. Layne’s face was classic when he said, “You didn’t even get your mouth out of the water!” I tried it again a few more times and it worked better, but I still took in water. I can only imagine what I looked like swimming down the lane with my arms at my side and my legs flopping around like crazy.
Another good one was when he told me to focus on breathing out my nose and not plugging my nose with my lip. Oh, I have to add in here that Layne was impressed by my nose plugging ability. He said that he had heard about people that could do that but never met anyone that actually did it! Go me! Anyway, I was so focused on trying to breathe that everything else kind of went downhill. When I got done, he looked at me and said, “Your kicking went to crap on that one!” I can't focuse on two things at once, give me a break.
Last but not least was the flip turn. We were trying to learn how to do flip turns. By this point we had been swimming for about 2 hours and I was exhausted. After a few attempts I had to stop. I felt like I was going to throw-up. Laura was starting to feel the same way. We had both consumed a little too much pool water and it was getting to us. We were just a touch water-logged.
It was a great adventure and I learned a great deal, but now I am exhausted. That is quite the workout! Just you wait, one of these days you will here my name at the Olympics. I can see it now...