slipstream becomings

today’s swimplan was the first one to have sprints!

i am tired. and again i wrestled with myself and pushed through tired. and i swam as fast as i could, which probably wasn’t very fast but no one was timing. i was huffing!

and i totally perved the ubersexy swim guy in the lane over. i am a dirty old woman.

i also learned that this luxurious long course swim availability is due to a mechanical problem with the bulkheads. i am going to campaign vigorously to get an evening/afternoon long course swim session added, as the 6 am slot is utterly  impossible for me with the girl et al.

(and i got some writing done. i’m hiding this in brackets so as not to curse it.)

i am starting to see how i could live everyday with fewer ww points, where i could swap out certain things, where i need a boost and most importantly, what happens when i don’t eat when i need to.

CRANKASAURUS!

now if i could just sort out how to wake up happy at about 6:30am….

thanks to some seemingly powerful over-the-counter cold medication i feel almost human.

swimplan upped my workout today. and like everyday as soon as i saw it i thought “oh blargh. no way i can do that.” and of course i’ve been quite sick since saturday so as i was swimming and feeling tired i kept thinking that part of taking care of myself is taking care of myself. so i should only do 12×100, not the 15 on the new plan. yeah. because that’s not cheating, just maintaining last week’s pace.

then that damn quotation from the side of the coffee cup started screaming in my ears. i may not be committed to school. i may not know how i am going to finish this degree and still afford go to teacher’s college. i may not really have a clue how i’m going to keep the car on the road and pay the rent and send the girl to day camp or anything else past today, but i know that if i can commit to this one thing - if i can solve this physical fitness/fat issue and learn to love myself and take pleasure in being again all that other stuff is sure going to be a lot easier.

so i kept swimming. 

i kept coaching myself to make each stroke smooth and long and strong. not to let the water slip. not to get sloppy, breathe rhythmically. fast, strong flipturns. every. single. time.

week 3.

isolde - 1  surrender - 0

that about sums up how i feel today. 

i’m making chicken noodle soup (no noodles) and eating sourdough bread and going back to bed.

(i might sneak in 45 minutes of yoga -the new dvd arrived! but i feel truly awful, so we’ll see. i think bed would be smarter.)

i think i understand why my collar bones have started to resurface.

the scale was down 6 pounds this week!

238—->232!

i know it’s too much for one week. all the voices in my head are screaming that next week won’t be that good, don’t let yourself get too excited, you might go up again…but really!

YAY ME!

i ate almost all my points this week - including flex points and activity points. i drank enough water. i slept loads. i have a cold. i went swimming anyway.

i. am. amazing.

(now, do you think i can write my shelley paper before i get kicked out of grad school? PLEASE?!?)

oh man. i feel like a mack truck ran over me twice.

i took the dog over to the dog park, went to school and then to the pool. the public pool, because the weekend hours at the university are not amenable to sleeping the day away, as i did today.

the public pool is a 50 m competitive pool with a double bulkhead and a competition grade diving tower/tank.

i swam in a lane with a guy doing 1000m of uninterrupted breast stroke.  i asked swimplan for an easier workout today on account of feeling so shitty, but the one it spit out was the same as yesterdays, minus one set of 3×100. so instead of doing 3×4x100, i was supposed to 3×3x100. i just did 4×3x100. that’s only going to make sense to swimmers.

the thing is it was short course, so i should have been doing 3 flip turns per 100 instead of the 1 i do at the university. i bailed on two of them, and roundly chastized myself for lacking commitment to myself and my goals.

i am doing this you know that? now, i’ve eaten all of 8 points today (my daily allotment is 28) so i should probably go eat something, though i really just feel like crawling into bed.

i guess this is a yay day. i can see my collarbones. i went swimming. i am alive.

two weeks in and my collar bones have begun to reappear.

that’s cool. really cool.

i have a terrible cold, and slept most of the day away.

i have to go over to the school and then to the pool. exercise is supposed to make you feel better when you have a cold right?

i took some “begin” pictures this morning. i’m overweight, to be sure. 

i’m also unhealthy. sometimes i get it. i indulged relentlessly for 15 years in everything. now my body reflects the decrepit state of my soul. i’m alone. i’m unattractive. i don’t “take care of myself”: shave, wax, prune, pick, style, dress…you name it. i really don’t care. i’m a single parent. surprise suprise. and worse than all of this is that i don’t believe in my heart of hearts that i’m worth changing it. i believe i will always be mediocre.

so.

change. change. change. 

believe.

i swam today. another one of these 12×100m workouts. and i must tell you that i feel like crap on a stick. i pushed myself through it. oh please, let me always believe that i can push myself through it.

that vision of who i could be, who i want to be, that more successful, more content, loving and beloved woman just over there…let her never fade from view.

(shelley remains virtually unread, nevermind written. so so so many things are so so so wrong.)