Embarrassment smells a bit like chlorine

Well THAT was awkward....

First, before I get into the story of embarrassment, chlorine, and whatnot; a little background.

So I've been going on my merry way doing this running biz lately and really loving it. My original goal in January was to train for and run a half marathon. No focus on time, just finishing. I figured I would accomplish my goal and move on. You know, maybe some recreational running here and there, but really nothing beyond that.

Oops, so one thing I should mention is I have a bit of an addictive/ competitive personality.

Great, now I'm hooked. I'm like a running junkie and start jonesing if I go too long without it. Within days of finishing my first half marathon, I was already looking into more races to run. Next up is a 10k next Tuesday, and then another half marathon in September. So much for moving on.

It would all be so simple if I could just keep my focus on running, but THEN one of my friends (Amber, the ultra-athletic friend) started talking triathlons..... Initially I told her no. HELL no. Not in a billion years would you catch me doing one of those.

Why? In the hierarchy of exercises (ranked from best to worst) it goes:
1. eating (um, hey- it's a sport...right?)
2. running
3. rollerblading
4. strength training
5. elliptical machines
6. biking
19. swimming

Notice the gap between biking and swimming. I can't think of other things off the top of my head, but I'm certain that there are probably a good handful of other exercises that I could do better than swimming.

Point being, I'm not a biking enthusiast. I don't like how it makes my ass and nether region hurt (sorry, it had to go there). I own a bike, a mountain bike, not one of those fancy "road bikes" that the fast cyclists use. I honestly never even knew there was a difference between the two until not too long ago. I'm not incapable of biking, I just don't prefer it.

Incapable, however, is the word I would use to describe swimming. My only formal swim training was in Jr High and I honestly never could get the hang of it. I'm not so inept that I would drown immediately upon entering a body of water. I can do enough to go very short distances, but it's sloppy at best. The stroke I am best at is the back stroke because that doesn't require me to stick my face in water, but even then I can't do it in a straight line. If I do lap swimming I end up 5 lanes over from where I began.

But ever since that friend threw out the idea of triathlon, after my initial "hell no!" I've been secretly entertaining the idea.... though I had no idea of my baseline skill level in biking and swimming as it has been years since I've done either.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. Instead of heading to the treadmill or elliptical, I hopped on a spinning bike. This one looked intriguing as it had a giant video screen on it. The neat thing about this bike is I was able to plug in my headphones and essentially do a spinning class by following the video.

Surprisingly, it wasn't all that bad! I've done a couple of actual spinning classes at the Y a few years back and I recall it being torture (then again it was at 6 in the morning- ick). I managed to do 10 miles in just under 30 minutes- way better than I thought.

After my semi-successful bike ride, I moved on to do a quick mile on the treadmill, which also went well. I was able to maintain a faster pace than I usually run, and I added some incline here and there for good measure.

I was feeling pretty good after my workout at the gym, in fact I was feeling so good that I thought I'd try my hand at lap swimming.

For clarification, the last time I had swam an actual lap in a pool for the purpose of exercise was.... oh, about 11 years ago. No lie. But I thought to myself "hey, how hard could it be?"

I grabbed my suit and $3 for pool admission and headed to the pool- feeling pretty good about myself!

Upon entering the pool area there are a sea of professional looking swim folk- donning goggles and swim caps, gliding gracefully through the water. They even did that thing where they got to the end of the lane and then turned around by flipping underwater (is there a technical term for that??).

Suddenly fear overtook me and erased the swagger I had just moments earlier. They were making it look so easy.... I began to have some serious self-doubt.

After staring at the pool for a good 10 minutes, I finally jumped in and stared across to the other end of the pool. Only 50 meters...not so bad....right? My goal was to do 10 laps, which didn't seem like that big of a deal.

One final deep breath and off I went.... aaaannnnndddd about 15 seconds later I remembered: SHIT. I forgot that I really can't swim all that well. I am by nature very uncoordinated and I've really never been able to master the breathing while swimming thing. In fact, I rarely ever stick my face in the water. Unfortunately, this makes for some very sloppy swimming (if you could call what I was doing "swimming").

Let's face it, what I was doing was NOT swimming, it was more like "avoiding death and embarrassment."

I managed to avoid death, but I can't say the same about avoiding embarrassment.

I finally reached the other end of the pool after trying about 5 different swimming strokes, doing none of them well. The only one I felt mildly comfortable with was the backstroke, but even then I couldn't do it in a straight line- I ended up 2 lanes over and nearly collided with another swimmer.

ONE LAP. That was all I had done and I was already worn out and defeated. I imagined that everyone was judging me and thinking what an awful swimmer I was (I know this is probably not true, but I was feeling completely out of place in that moment). I sat there at the end of the pool for several minutes and went across again. It pretty much went exactly how the first lap went- terribly.

I eased my way out of the pool and slinked over to one of the poolside chairs. I felt ridiculous and tried to determine my next course of action. Would people notice that I was leaving after only 2 laps? Would I look totally foolish?

I determined that people probably didn't notice me as much as I thought they did and I probably looked silly just sitting in a chair starting into space.

So I left. Not even 20 minutes after I had arrived, I was admitting defeat. Pool- 1, Teresa- 0.

I don't know what the take away message is from this story, other than I guess I'm glad I double checked my swimming skills before I attempted a triathlon. I really had considered just registering for the triathlon my friend suggested and figured that swimming 1/3 mile wouldn't be too difficult.

For the record, 2 laps= .06 mile. POINT ZERO SIX.

While there may be a triathlon in my future, it won't be any time soon. Similar to running, swimming will require me to do a fair amount of training... and really mastering the basics. I'll put that on my to-do list, but for now I think I'll stick to running.

Michael Phelps, you may now breathe a sigh of relief. You don't have to worry about me shattering any of your records for a little while.