I’m tired.
I don’t want to whine, but it’s the truth.
My body is exhausted, my muscles ache, and I feel run-down all the time. I almost always nap on the Metro on the way home from work, which I never did until about a month ago. Despite my exhaustion, I’m not sleeping particularly well, probably because my limbs are too tired — or because I’m starting to have dreams (nightmares) about subjects like wet suits, cold water and making it to morning swim practice on time.
I’m swimming five days a week as I finish up my training for the 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Swim on June 14 — a mere two weeks away. I am putting in more than 11 miles a week unless I’m racing. Then I swim about nine or 10. Plus, I take yoga lessons once a week and am biking once or twice a week.
I find myself counting the days until I can begin resting, what swimmers call “tapering,” so that my body will be fresh for the race.
Though I’m exhausted, I am swimming strong and fast right now — and my teammates are noticing. That alone is enough to keep me motivated as I finish my push for the Bay.
I’m getting faster not only because I’m swimming so much, but because I am pushing myself — as are my coaches — during practice.
On Monday nights, for example, I can swim in a lane where the swimmers are faster than me, or in a lane where the swimmers are slower than me. I have chosen the faster lane, which hurts every week, but training with those lane mates has made me better.
Last weekend, I raced in the 2-mile Jim McDonnell Lake Swim in Reston, my final training race before the Bay.
My time was 55 minutes and 27 seconds, more than three minutes faster than the last time I swam Lake Audubon in 2006.
My first open-water swim was in the same lake five years ago.
That year, my boyfriend, Tom, suggested on a Tuesday that we race in the swim that Sunday. I had swum only in a pool, so I was a bit concerned. It’ll be fun, he said.
So we signed up and headed out to Lake Audubon on the Sunday morning of the race. The sky was gray, the water was chilly and I was scared. So I hugged the shoreline the entire swim. It was the longer way to do the race, since the course is marked by buoys in the middle of the lake, but I felt safer.
My time was pretty good, and I placed third in my age group, so I was thrilled and wanted to swim it again.
These days, you can’t wait until the week before the race to sign up. With the growing popularity of open-water swimming and triathlons, the swim fills up quickly and entries close at the beginning of May.
In this year’s race, I found myself staying in the middle of the lake, on a direct path and shunning the shoreline.
I had planned to wear a wet suit, but the water was a relatively comfortable 73 degrees and I decided against it.
My arms and legs were tired from the outset. I spent Saturday in a pair of flip-flops instead of wearing tennis shoes with support, so my legs were wiped out by early evening. No problem, I thought — I don’t have to worry since my wet suit will give me extra buoyancy. My arms were tired from swim practice Saturday morning, followed by a fairly difficult yoga practice.
But since this was a training race, I tried not to worry about how I felt. As long-distance swimmer Kathy Kirmayer told me several months ago, it doesn’t matter how well you train when you feel great, it matters how you swim when you’re beaten down.
So I “manned up,” as my brother John likes to say, and sprinted as much as I could for the second half of the race.
Standing up on the boat ramp and running to the finish-line mat was tough, since my legs were jelly, but I looked at my watch and was pleased with what I saw.
Now, if I can just do as well when I battle the currents and length of the Chesapeake.
But before that, I get 10 days of rest.
Cathy Gainor is the editor of the Personal Best page and is writing an occasional column chronicling her progress as she trains for the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim June 14. She can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]
