This is a happy post

So I know that you all know that I swim with an amazing group of people on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  As much as I hate getting there every time, I really enjoy our time together and our workouts.  The workouts are challenging, but they never push too far.  I feel so good when I'm done, and that pushes me through the rest of the day.

But until we do something insane, I never know just how beneficial these workouts have been for me.  I talked a little bit last week about how on Valentine's day, the belief of my teammates and my coach pushed me to a new level.  Tuesday, I built on that, and I feel like I hit an ever better level.  I set a new personal record, folks.

From Pinterest

We finally got our coach to stop telling us all of the awful things he's planning on making us do in advance.  No sense in worrying about what's coming, right?  So none of us saw it coming when he announced that we were going to be timing our race pace 100 yard freestyle.  It is, quite possibly, my least favorite thing we do in our workouts.

...Last time we did these, I swam my fastest 100 in 1 min 42 sec, with an average time of 1 min 47 sec.  I was pretty happy with that.  It's a respectable time, when compared with my 50 yard pace and my 200 yard pace.  Last week the coach upped the ante though, and had us calculate theoretical 100 yard race pace times.  When he told me that my new goal was 1 min 31 sec, I was pretty sure he was insane.  That's 16 seconds faster than my average race pace!  And if you aren't a swimmer, I can tell you right now that dropping 16 seconds in a pool is HARD.

From Pinterest

So we got to it.  I really didn't feel very fast.  I picked the person to swim against who I have always felt challenged by yet we are very evenly matched.  I wanted to stay with him, but know that I was really working to stay with him.  And I wanted to see if I could beat my pacing buddy. 

...And I did!  I set a new personal record of 1 min 33sec.  I dropped 9 seconds off my old PR, and 14 sec off of my previous average!  Even better, my slowest 100 was one second slower than my previous PR.  My times were not super consistent, but I still showed a lot of improvement, and at the end, I had nothing left to give.  It was so gratifying to see how far I was able to come, especially since I only got back in the pool again in mid-December.

And today, I know that I can do anything.  I just have to work hard, and believe.