Swimming is Not Running

Swimming may be just what the doctor ordered, but this land-lubbing Peg Leg sure wishes the doctor had ordered some muddy, mountainous trails.  Swimming is not the torture I thought it would be, but I am not efficient enough to get an amazing workout and my Peg Leg feels really strange flapping around free of das boot for an hour.

Swimming is clean (you can’t even feel that you are sweating), safe (no coyotes, mountain lions, big rocks, snakes or cliffs)…and oh, so, repetitive.  I am definitely a dirty girl.  This Peg Leg likes a dripping sweat, dirt crusted up my shins, an empty water bottle, a gut-wrenching grind up a big hill, a coyote spotting, a few deer or even a big snake.  I’ll take the swimming if that’s all I get, but my heart and soul are not in it.

Worse yet, swimming is a solitary endeavor.  I don’t have little ducky friends who want to swim with me and I doubt there would be much socializing between laps.  I miss my 2-5 hour runs with buddies.  You learn a lot about a friend when you are tromping along together, undistracted for hours at a time.  You become very close and you count on those hours together.  My running buddies are some of my closest confidants.  I share more with them, and know more about them, than some of my friends I see on a daily basis.  The motion, the exertion, the commitment loosens the legs and frees the mind and heart, and we share.  I miss these times.  When we have hours upon hours together, undistracted, we have time to come full-circle…to finish conversations, to follow-up on the unfinished ones, to just listen.

I am now three weeks post-op and I am feeling so far removed from my daily hours on the trails that when I think about running it feels almost dream like. I used to feel like I never saw anyone running around town, and certainly not on the trails.  Now, I feel like everywhere das boot and I go, there are people running.  Is this just a bad dream or is the lack of endorphins getting to me?  I will come full circle, I will get out of the pool and I will hit the trails.  Until then,

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin’ until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you, ’till we meet again.

Swim Little Fishy

Peg Leg got wet.  No, I am not a bragging rebel patient again.  I was given clearance to swim!  This little ducky is free to dip my head and wet my feathers. I cannot touch anything with my foot, but I can swim.  Taking off das boot and getting it back on on the side of the pool is not a pretty sight, but the humiliation of das boot removal and my neon swim suit (which, no joke, is called Dolfin Uglies) could not damper my excitement to get my heart rate up for the first time in nearly three weeks.

I am not an efficient nor beautiful swimmer, but it felt surprisingly good to swim.  My sore and pathetic Peg Leg did alright propelling me through the water.  I made it about 45 minutes and had been so relieved no other swimmers or bystanders were around for my maiden voyage.  But, as Peg Leg luck would have it, a few arrived just in time for my exit from the pool.  Grace is not my first, nor middle name.  I thought I had das boot’s removal and reattachment planned well with a towel laid out for drying and das boot right at the end of my lane.  But, when it came time to get out, I realized the ladder was at the other side of the pool.  No chance I can scoot in my Uglies, with Peg Leg in the air from one side of the pool deck to the other.  Imagine a crab with an extra claw stuck in the air…So I had to brave a full-body hoist up, with an audience.

You know when you try to hoist up like rising from a dip and you don’t quite make it?  Embarrassing.  I had the added worry of banging my Peg Leg on the wall.  A definite NO-NO.  I feigned stretching, had a drink of my water, played with my watch (actually my son’s old Shark watch from Jr. High when he was all about Rasta colors…adds to the look of my Uglies suit).  These bystanders and swimmers are still lurking and I need to go.  I muscled some muscle and some courage, and popped this ducky right out of the pool.  Quack.  I attempted drying off while sitting on towel, reattached das boot, did not look up and scurried out of there.  But, I went back again today.  Duckies can’t stay out of the water too long.  Even the Uglies.