Of SwimLabs and Skippy

... Hopefully one of these days Brandon will blog about his run and cruiser ride in Santa Barbara from this week, but that's neither here nor there for this second.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my December Round-Up post, Brandon got me swim lessons at SwimLabs for Christmas. Well, my first lesson was yesterday and hoo boy, was it insightful!

The good news: I'm not a lost cause when it comes to my crawl. Yay!

The bad news: I still have a TON of stuff to work on. My breathing, which I knew was going to be an issue ... is. I kick with my knees too much and my stroke isn't so efficient. Therefore, I have a huge old list of stuff to work on:

- breathe into my shoulder
- kick from my hips
- reach on each stroke
- hand/arm entry into the water

It's a lot of stuff to keep straight and it's rough trying to put it all together. I'm just hoping that one day it clicks for me. In the meantime, it looks like a pull buoy is going to become my new best friend in pool training.

In Skippy news ... I've been on him four times so far this month. I've worked my way up to 30 minutes, though it's still in a few segments. I know it's rough; a few weeks ago, I posted on facebook how I was going to learn to love the Skipster even if it killed me. A friend posted the following: it takes absolute discipline cause trainers suck!!!!

And he's totally right. I've heard that the Spinervals DVDs are awesome and indeed, one came in the box with Skippy, but I have a feeling it's a bit too advanced for Brandon and I. I know that the series does include some beginner DVDs and I think that we're going to have to try and track them down.

In the meantime, I've found that sports-related movies (okay, just Center Stage (don't judge me!) and Miracle) DO help. I don't know whether it's a mutual suffering - you suffer along with the people on the screen - but it helped. Particularly watching Miracle tonight as I put in 30 minutes on Skippy.

My new goal for him is to be able to either suffer through an hour (even if it takes a few breaks) and/or 20 minutes consecutively by the end of the month. I hate that I can't do that now, but I have to keep reminding myself - building blocks. That's all this is.