Bank That Workout

You really just never know when your next amazing workout will occur.

I certainly didn’t expect mine to come off five hours sleep with heavy fatigue.

Yet there I was this morning at the Tower 26 swim in Pacific Palisades. I usually start in a mid-level lane, which is typically (lately) the fifth of eight lanes. Today, Coach Gerry asked for two volunteers to join Lane 4. Nobody moved in Lane 5.

This is the part of the story where I admit that I half-feel like Gerry already knows I’m going to volunteer even before I know I’m going to volunteer.

Since nobody was moving and I know Gerry doesn’t like to wait around, I just ducked under the lane line and took my spot amidst some fast swimmers whom I normally have a hard time matching.

I expected a beatdown, and I knew I wasn’t ready for it. I was tired already.

Then, for the next hour, not only did I hold my own, I was holding back so as not to draft off my lane-mates too much.

I was as shocked as they probably were!

I’ve been working on my swim stroke using the Vasa trainer, usually three, 10-minute sessions a week. And it’s apparently really paying off. I felt powerful, smooth and efficient in the water. FINALLY, after 10 years of swimming, I’m starting to perceive what it’s supposed to feel like when Coach Gerry says to “grip it and rip it” in the water.

As I drove home, the morning was unusually well lit and clear. I could see the full length of Catalina Island, and the hilly treetops in Palos Verdes. It was spectacular.

It became the kind of workout and the kind of morning you want and need to bank mentally. That way, when the disappointments come — and they will — you can resort back to that time you didn’t expect to be great and were nonetheless.

Training, good, bad and ugly, is tricky. You can be prepared and stink it up (been there), and you can brace yourself for a crap day and surprise yourself (been there too).

The key is being consistent enough to experience the good, bad and ugly!

And the next level after that is to learn from the bad and ugly, while banking the good for when the bad wolf wants you to remember only the bad times.

This is how you feed the good wolf.