Rest/Core Work Day

Yesterday was a bike and swim day and the bike part went really well, but the swimming? Not so much. I am a dreadfully slow swimmer. I’m slow and uncoordinated and I panic in the water, all of which tend to make swim days seem like “fail” days. So, knowing that today was just a rest and core work day, I thought maybe I could sneak in a little swim to feel better. My plan was to swim 100 meters, rest, swim 100 meters, rest and repeat, thinking that I would be able to go farther total distance because of the resting, which would help my swimming self-confidence. Totally makes sense, right? What I didn’t account for was how much worse I would feel when I couldn’t go further. Or when I swam slower than normal. Waaaaah!
I want to quit this training plan. Really, I want to quit swimming altogether because I suck at it so bad. My problem (well, one of them, at least…) is that I’m impatient to see progress. I’m swimming three days a week and I’d like to see some improvement in my time or distance after just three weeks of swimming and it ain’t happnin. So this afternoon I went bra shopping and got a haircut. That might have seemed non-sequitory, but it’s not. I cleared my head and made a mental list of all the reasons I should continue swim training:
1. Doing a TRI makes me badass.
2. And that’s pretty much all the reason I need.
So I’ve decided to stop wearing my watch when I swim and just concentrate on distance and feeling comfortable in the water. Tomorrow is a run and swim day so we’ll see how this works out for me.