I got up, grabbed my bag of swimming gear I had packed the night before, double checked my contents, and left the house.  I had my goggles, towel, ID, and clothes to change into after the workout. I knew I probably looked like I’ve never seen 5am as a start of the day, so I managed to take a selfie as I walked out the door at 5:25am.

Here we go; the journey officially started today! Reformation! Determination! Motivation! I had everything going for me (minus the early start time)!

Thankfully the Chaska Community Center was only about a 12 minute drive and was not very busy when I checked in. Unfortunately, my membership had expired and I had to renew the family pass. Nonetheless, I was able to get my stuff, find a locker, and enter the pool area by 6am.

The workout itself was a Day 1 Fitness Test Primer. Out of the three events, swimming was my most confident. However, I hadn’t truly exercised in over a year (if you take away the 1 week of skiing in March). After the first couple of laps I felt good. My legs were working. My arms were pulling. I didn’t swallow any water. My breathing was every 3rd or even 4th stroke. The only thing I felt was my lungs and heart yelling at me, “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!” After my warmup, I didn’t break long before getting into the full test. After about 50yds, my heart and lungs settled down and I got into a nice groove.

This was also my first workout on my Garmin 955. I had used a Garmin in the past during my running with friends workout (Shoutout to Brian, June, Michelle, and the rest of the Run Chaska crew)! This was the first time I had a training workout sync’d with my watch, though. So I fired up the swimming tracker and did my first timed 400yds. After finishing it in 8:04, my watch said, “You have a workout to do, would you like to start it?” This was my sync’d training workout. What I had just done was separate from the planned workout. I felt good about my math and manually overrode the workout with my timed stats (2:01/100yds).

The second test of 200yds seemed much harder for me for some reason. My pace was a little slower overall at 2:08/100yds, but it gives me a starting point for which to go off of.

After a nice relaxing cool down and some stretching, I felt really good. It was still before 7am and my workout for the day was done. I had normally been an evening workout person, but this was amazing! I knew my skeptical but yet supportive friends would wonder if I actually started this thing today, so I managed to have a very nice lady take my photo after my workout.

My journey has just begun, but I’m looking forward to the outcomes it brings!

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