Chatty Kathleen

Rock climbing worked me over on Thursday. I still feel its presence in the vicinity of my armpits, sides, forearms and in my ability to grasp objects. Soreness made for an interesting swim today especially when I did the back crawl.

I did 21 laps and spent almost two hours in the pool. Now, it didn't take me two hours to complete those laps. I paused in between while my lane neighbor, Chatty Kathleen, talked to me. Kathleen is recovering from a stroke. In between swimming, she said soothing things to me like you're in a safe place, we start out in water, become one with the water etc. etc.

Kathleen even took the time to show and tell me, as if it were as easy as spreading room temperature butter on bread, how to breathe during the front crawl. Now, that's when I felt really sorry for Kathleen. Her recovery is going well and she definitely out-swam me but the woman just doesn't know about my struggle with the front crawl. She doesn't know how I walk around taking deep breaths or looking at this video



or looking at this one again



or how I try to glean info from blogs.

Breathing While Swimming By Coach Dee

She didn't know about today's pre-swimming meditation.