Tag Archives: swimming

Go Jump in the Lake

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The swimming pool at the YMCA is supposed to be open today.

I am absolutely thrilled, because as expected, I hardly exercised at all when the pool was closed. I don’t understand how you gym rats can stay so dedicated and keep on going to the gym every day, but I admire your willpower! I only went once and did some stationary biking.

Then I realized that I would have to do twice as much laundry if I went to the gym every day.

I’ve missed swimming, though. I haven’t slept as well, I haven’t had as much energy and my sleep schedule has gone goofy again. I feel flabby, and worse, I feel like eating all the time. It is not good.

But happily, it’s over! The pool awaits, I have a fresh clean swimming suit and I’m so excited to go back!

Note: The water is warm and the pool smells lemony fresh! (They probably cleaned the glass railing or something.)

Revealing Swimming Suits

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I have not worn a two-piece swimsuit since I was about 4. It was a pink bikini with little black polka dots, and I can’t remember liking it or hating it; it allowed me to swim, and apart from that, I probably didn’t care.

Now I’m the proud owner of the first two-piece swimming suit I’ve had in more than 20 years, shown at left. Yes, that’s a swimming suit, and yes, it has two pieces. It’s one of those newfangled tankinis.

It’s very difficult to find swimming suits if you’re not a size zero, and these days, tankinis seem to be most of what’s on sale. They’re two pieces, which allows you to mix and match tops and bottoms, but they look like one piece swimsuits and cover your belly.

Sort of.

If I bought swimming suits to try to look decorative while lying on the beach, my priorities in swimsuit purchases would probably change. However, I buy swimming suits to swim in them, and thus, I like a nice high neckline and legholes that aren’t high cut. They have tankinis in all kinds of different styles and I was able to find a high necked top and a pair of shorts-like bottoms.

The tanktop has two parts; the pretty outer part and a sort of bandeau-thing inside that fits like I imagine a bikini top would (since I don’t remember how the pink bikini felt anymore).

That’s because when you swim in a tankini, the outside part sort of floats around. It feels very strange and I’m very glad the people at the YMCA are non-judgmental, because they probably thought I was crazy when I swam in it the first time. I kept having to surface and pause to giggle. It feels like swimming in your clothes, but without the excess weight, and it had almost a tickly sensation as the extra fabric from the outer layer floated around you.

This may be how jellyfish feel on a daily basis.

The tankini top just floats around you (with the inner bandeau making sure nobody sees anything important) and here’s the critical part: even if you aren’t actually showing that much tummy, it feels like the whole thing is exposed the whole time.

If you are self-conscious about your belly, you should probably stick to a good old-fashioned one-piece swimsuit.

Face Down on the Floor at Avalon

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Last night I ended up lying down on the floor in the middle of a Worthington business, with about 10 women around me watching me demonstrate, on dry land, a breaststroke.

It was a weird day.

I went to get my haircut at Avalon, and asked them for their advice because I was sick to death of my hair. They found a cut in a magazine that they figured would work well, and then they set out to do my hair. But they also had questions.

I’ve lost about 23 pounds from swimming at the YMCA lately and everybody wanted to know how I did it. They had all kinds of questions…

Do I participate in the water aerobics class? No, but I’ve thought about it. Last time I checked I had some scheduling conflicts and couldn’t join. … what changes to my diet had I made? None, apart from skipping lunch rather often because I swim over my lunch hour. … how did it affect me? I have actual muscles in my arms (which I hadn’t seen for 10 years) and I can carry things without getting tired right away. I’ve also gone from a size 24 to 18. … what stroke do you use? Breaststroke and occasionally I just kick with my arms out ahead of me like Superman.

…How do you do the breaststroke?

Well, I couldn’t really describe that, and my feeble attempts to show them while in the chair, cape wrapped around me, were pathetic. So I agreed to show them after the haircut.

I think they were surprised when I actually did.

Why Ask Y?

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I haven’t mentioned going to the Worthington YMCA for a long time, but I do still go and swim every single weekday, unless I have an appointment over the noon hour.

Today I tried on a dress that hasn’t fit for a while, and shock! it actually fit.

I wore it to work, to the bemusement of my coworkers, one of whom wondered if I had found some wiles somewhere.

Nope! I just found a dress I didn’t have to go shopping in order to get. One of my old pairs of pants fits again, too.

And you know what the best part is?

Everyone here at the Globe has been super supportive, and everyone at the YMCA has been super supportive too. Nobody’s ever rolled their eyes at me or given any hint that they thought I would never be able to do it, no one has ever eyed me in a way that said "Yeah, right, lardbutt" and everyone smiles, waves and says something encouraging when I’m about to go to the Y.

If it weren’t for the folks at the Y and the Globe, I seriously doubt I’d have been able to stick with the swimming.

Thank you all so much!

Healthiest Fat Girl in Worthington?

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The title of this blog is what I was aiming to be when I started going to the YMCA to swim every day, and while I don’t think I’m quite there yet, I am getting better.

My arms are thinner and my lower legs and arms are actually exhibiting muscle tone. They haven’t done that for a long, long time, probably since I was in sports in 10th grade.

My right arm doesn’t get tired anymore when I blowdry my hair in the morning, and neither arm gets tired after I wash my hair.

My clothes continue to get looser, which is a problem, but it’s a good problem and eventually I would have had to buy new pants anyway.

I can run up one flight of stairs without wheezing and two flights without getting significantly out of breath.

I look in the mirror every day and think: Huh, my hips look smaller today, or wow, my thighs aren’t nearly as fat as they used to be.

My glasses even feel loose on my head.

The muscles on my lower legs are now visible when I stand up.

I can sing while I walk.

All this without dieting.

Which brings me to the bit I’m still a little worried about. I don’t know whether my blood pressure has gone down at all, and since I’m still eating bad stuff, I can’t really expect that it has.

However, much progress has been made.

And I still go to the YMCA and swim, every single weekday, and it is still fun.

Malfunctioning Goggles? No.

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As soon as I got into the pool today, I realized something was wrong with my goggles, because the water wasn’t as clear as usual.

Actually, it turned out that there wasn’t anything wrong with my goggles at all. It was just new water in the pool, making the water look a bit murkier. I was surprised at the dream-like effect it had on the swimming experience, though. It made everything seem a bit remote and strange, and because I can’t hear much with water in my ears either, it seemed very surreal.

I swam for about five minutes longer than I meant to.

The Hand Is Quicker than the Hair

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I found the secret to putting on a swim cap:

Have less hair.

Seriously, it works. Yesterday I got a haircut and today I was able to get almost every strand into my psychotically cheery yellow swim cap. And there’s not that much less hair; there’s about an inch less in the back and it’s about the same length in the front. But the stuff in the back apparently made all the difference.

Now the funny thing that happened with the haircut (I went to Avalon here in town) was… my hairdresser, Michelle D., was doing a great job, and she asked me where I was from. I said I was from Jackson, and she said she was too. I asked what her last name was, and then we figured out that she was the younger sister of one of my classmates at Jackson County Central.

Weird!

Also, one of the best haircuts I’ve had. I said to make the back short and keep the front at about the same length, and she did exactly that and then she figured out how to make the rest look good. There’s a lot to be said for letting the experts make the decisions, I guess!

Floating in Nothingness Forever

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Today when I went swimming at the YMCA the music wasn’t on, at least for the first 20 or so minutes I was there.

For most people, that probably wouldn’t be a problem, but for me it caused a bit of concern.

I liked it, at first, because it was terribly peaceful just hearing the splish, sploosh, splish, sploosh as the 3-4 swimmers paddled, swam or bounced (I believe he’s doing physical therapy or else water aerobics) back and forth.

The problem is me, or more specifically, my defective, misshapen eyeballs.

As you all know, I can’t see the hands on the clocks at the Y without my glasses on, and of course I don’t swim with my glasses on. The music (some of which I like, some of which I really dislike) helps give me an idea of how long I’ve been swimming so that I don’t have to get out of the pool, retrieve the glasses and check the time.

Without the music, I felt like I could have gone on swimming forever, or at least until the Y kicked me out of the pool. Again, not really a problem, but I have to go back to work at some point or my boss will get really annoyed. Somehow I seriously doubt "But they didn’t have music on at the Y!" is a good excuse for missing work.

But then someone turned on the music (Bryan Adams’s "Everything I Do") and I squinted up at the clock to find out how long it had been, and guessed how long I had left, and finished out the song and got my chlorine and tangerine (shampoo) scented self back to work.

Also, I discovered today that I could adjust the nose strap on my goggles to make them fit better.

Yes, it took me that long, but don’t laugh too hard–remember that I don’t look at the goggles except when my glasses are off, and of course when my glasses are off I’m lucky if I can put the goggles on at all without hurting myself. Also, I lost my first pair of cheap goggles not that long ago, so I haven’t had these for very long.

So my face isn’t as incorrectly shaped as I had feared, and my goggles (slightly more expensive than the first pair, but vastly superior, purchased from Center Sports) are much better than I thought.