#justtri

Swimming is psychological warfare for me. 

There’s the element of it that every (especially when you’re new at it) swimmer goes through of feeling out of breath. Like you’re going to drown. Like a fish out of water (oh, the irony). There’s definitely that. But then there’s also all the things I personally have to go through before, during, and after every swim.

Last June/July I hit the pool one evening during my training. For about a year or so leading up to this point I had started to get this random itch after most of my showers. It had been getting progressively more frequent, and I was still trying to get a handle on the issue. By this point I had started to use Vaseline to try and lock in moisture on my skin after showers, which had a 50/50 success rate on whether I would still itch or not. Well after this particular shower, I started to get itchy despite my moisturizing protocol. I figured it would pass after a few minutes...

I spent the rest of my waking hours that evening scratching at my legs.

I suspect now that I hadn’t rinsed off properly after my pool swim, and then locked the chlorine in my skin with the Vaseline... This meant that later when I tried to take another shower I couldn’t even get beneath the protective layer of lotion. After two hours curled up on my bed, itching uncontrollably, my roommate made a run to the store to pick up some calamine lotion to apply on my legs, which finally soothed the itching enough for me to fall asleep.

Since then, after bringing it up with my dermatologist and trying different things, I’ve finally settled on a protocol that seems to have a high success rate of keeping the itching at bay (making sure I hydrate properly all day long; vaseline BEFORE entering the pool (I have to); vitamin C solution immediately after my swim and before my shower; pat dry minimally, and immediately apply shea butter) but the experience has scarred me, because I know it could happen again. In fact it has. And so the hours and minutes leading up to each swim is often nerve-wracking.

Couple that with the fact that I’ve been using YouTube mostly over the last year or so to teach myself freestyle; that floating on the water is still an elusive dream; that my used to be so stiff I used to move backwards kicking with a kickboard...

Yesterday I was 25m into my 1,900m swim when I realized that my right shoulder felt tight and sore, and I couldn’t perform a stroke with that arm without pain. 500m in I was contemplating throwing in the towel for the evening...

Swimming for me... I’m always just replaying Dory’s advice over and again in my head: 

It’s been 1.5 months since I’ve had an itching episode like the one I mentioned above from swimming. I can make it 25m across the pool now with the kickboard without ever stopping or going backwards. And I finished all 1,900m of my swim yesterday, and my shoulder felt better coming out than going in.

This has been one of the benefits of pursuing this sport. It has given me an arena to build mental fortitude and stick-to-it-iveness, and to wrestle with some demons. I’m not just getting stronger physically, but emotionally and psychologically. It’s a place where I can make mistakes and get up again and keep swimming.

There is something magical in those words: Just. Keep. Swimming