Swimming...

I've been in school for quite a while now, and I've taken a lot of different classes.  If you were to ask me which of them has been the most influential, you might be surprised to find that one of the classes that has done the most for me is beginning swimming.  BYU has this really great system where you can take any sports class, and they are all pass/fail.  It is a great way to try new sports and activities.  I grew up in rural Idaho, and so we never really did any competitive swimming in school or anything.  In the Winter 2010 semester I signed up for the beginning class.  As a Boy Scout I had earned the swimming merit badge, so I didn't think a beginning class would be that hard.  Boy was I wrong.  The instructor told us to swim one lap (50 yds) to see how much we already knew.  By the time I finished, I was sputtering and shaking, and my chest felt like I had been stabbed (I imagine...I've never actually been stabbed).  

To make a long story short, swimming ended up being very challenging, but every practice I could see improvement.  The first time I swam 500 yds. without stopping it took me 15 minutes.  I stuck with swimming, repeating the beginning class a few times and eventually taking the intermediate class.  Now I swim 500 yds. in under 8 minutes and a mile in under 28 minutes.  I still try to swim three times a week or so, and I did a biathlon.  This is the first sport I have ever really felt good doing.  I'm not very coordinated with things like basketball, and running sometimes hurts my knees, but I can swim till I'm almost sick, and the next day I'm good to do it again.  It is amazing!  I've lost weight, and I'm a lot stronger.  It also helps me to have energy and be motivated to do other types of exercise too.

I'm really excited, because this semester my younger sister Suzy and I have signed up for the beginning swimming class together.  Today was our first day in the pool, and I could tell that Suzy may be feeling some of the things that I felt when I first started.  She is such an amazing athlete, and if she sticks with it I don't doubt that she will soon be better at swimming than I am.

I guess I've learned that it is important to try new things.  I thought I just didn't like sports, and that I would never be athletic.  It turns out I just hadn't found an activity that I liked yet.  I am so glad that I tried it and that I stuck it out when it was difficult.  This semester, I am trying another new sport.  I signed up for a beginning men's gymnastics class.  We'll see how it goes...