Soldier-Zipper-Airplane

So, after forcing myself to go to the pool as often as possible over the last six or seven months, I now find myself dragging in the afternoon if I don't go for a swim. This is good news since I loathe swimming and spent the hours between waking in the morning and climbing out of the pool at the end of my swim psyching myself up for the day's laps.

Now instead of the running commentary being along the lines of:

"You need to go swimming because your back will hurt later. You need to go swimming because your back hurts now. You need to go swimming because it's good for you. You need to go swimming because you don't want to have to go back to physio. You need to go swimming because if you do have to go back to physio, you don't want to tell the physiotherapist that you've stopped swimming and that's why you're back. etc etc over and over again"

All I need to say to myself is: "You won't make it to 3:00 this afternoon if you don't go swimming and then you'll end up putting in two or three hours of work at home tonight because you'll be so slow."

And it works. I like the way I feel after a swim. I like that I sleep a million times better at night, even though I'm alone. I like that my back feels good. And I like that somehow I get all kinds of extra energy and get way more done in the afternoons when I swim!

But I still don't really like swimming. I'm getting much faster and my endurance is way better. I've come a long way since February and March when I first got in the pool. Okay, so I was still on a regular schedule of super strong painkillers, I was using a cane, and at that point I was seriously wondering if life was ever going to be "normal" again (what exactly is normal?!?!), but I was only doing a whopping 100 metres in five minutes.

I still need to talk myself through the workout. I got bored of the 1-2-3-4 rhythm. And I got bored of the nursery rhymes I was singing in my head. They both keep me going, but I needed something else.

And then today, today I remember the elementary backstroke from my backward swimming lesson days. So I swam soldier-zipper-airplane and even when I was swimming some other stroke, my brain was chanting soldier-zipper-airplane. It's a good rhythm.

soldier-zipper-airplane
soldier-zipper-airplane
soldier-zipper-airplane