Relaxing On The Swim

I'm following through on my goal of teaching Moana to swim this summer! She definitely has some fear of deep water and she keeps saying that she can't swim because she's too little. Hmmm. So I started by simply telling her that no- she's big enough to learn to swim! This bit of info seemed to take her by surprise but I have reinforced it enough that she is starting to believe me. :)

When we were at the lake in Washington she did a bit of swimming- mostly just jumping into the lake with her life vest on and Scott would catch her. And even though she could float with the vest on, she would giggle and laugh and scream almost hysterically (from anxiety?) if he was not holding her at least a little. We made a little progress at the lake then b/c at least she seemed to think it was fun, though honestly it was too cold to stay in the lake for too long at once. Here's a little video if you like to watch 3 year old girls scream.

Both days this weekend we took her into the pool at our condo complex. The water is finally warm enough to just play in without shivering so that's a step in the right direction! It's funny too- when she goes in the water without her floaties she's convinced she's 'swimming' even though she has her life vest on. Somehow she does not see the two aids as performing the same function. Anyway, yesterday for the first time she finally started to really relax in the water without me touching her. This was a huge step! And granted she was still wearing that life vest, BUT she managed to completely relax and float on her back (hips up! chin up!) while I counted to 10. Then she managed to jump in without me touching her and dog paddle her way over to the other side of the pool... and back! She did that several times- huge progress really because she learned that if she does indeed just stay relaxed she can move herself through the water in whichever direction she wants to go. I praised her a ton of course and then at the end of our pool time she asked for a trophy. Ha! We came inside and I gave her one of my medals from a triathlon race and she wore it while she was napping.

So we're on our way with Moana. I think progress may come a little quicker now that she's got the being relaxed in the water thing down. That is key #1 for sure.

Speaking of swimming... we did our favorite Ironman workout this morning... 4 x 1000's descend 1-4 w/ 1' rest. Simple. Not easy. I almost managed to nail it... almost being the key word there. Funny thing though my 1st one was just a moderate warm up effort and was only ~20-30" slower than my next 3 which were all 15:20-15:27 (LCM) and felt increasingly hard. So I'm thinking that if I stay super relaxed and swim warm up pace/effort in Canada, I'll give up less than 2' total on my swim split and come out of the water having conserved a good bit of energy. That seems like no-brainer race strategy to me!