Getting back into it

Taking time off of swimming is hard. Those first few weeks back are hard. Its is the hardest time of the year (for me at least). Unless you work out during that time you loose all feeling for the water. Instead of swimmings you sink and it feels like you got hit by a train. Over the last 5 years you know hot many breaks I've had from swimming? 3. I have taken 3 total weeks off of swimming in the last five years. It is literally the worst thing for a swimmer to do. We loose all of our muscle and there is nothing we can do about it. We loose our feel for the water and there is also nothing we can do about it. It's not like we can just move back and forth in a hot tub or something you actually have to be pulling your body weight. We can go to the gym and lift weights, or go biking for hours on end and we will either build to much or not enough muscle to keep us in shape. While yes that seems like a hard thing to do, its all us swimmers can think about. We don't really have a lot of friends because we are always in the pool and what ever true friends we have are at the pool. So when we are taken or walk away from the pool (or any chlorine for that matter) we loose our selves. But breaks aren't all that bad... you get some time off and you get a life (... kind of). You get to sleep and catch up on homework that you have been putting off until the last nigh and you get to eat like never before (Micheal phelps would still beat you at eating on his bad day) because eating is the most important part of a workout. It's amazing really how great it feels until you get back in and it all come rushing back to you like never before and you wish you could have gone to swim at least once while you were away from your pool.

Photo Courtesy of Swimmingscience.com