SO Excited!!

Tonight was my last swimming class until the fall... I'm not excited about that, BUT I am excited about the progress I made! At the beginning of this 12 week session, our instructor timed us on 50m, 100m and 200m swims for our benchmark to see how we improved by the end. Tonight was our 'timing' night. If I had just posted my initial times, unless you're a swimmer, you likely have no idea if they were slow or fast. But wait until you see my before and after!! (This is almost better than a before and after photo display! Although I'm sure there is some change there too, I didn't think to take photos...)

Distance	10wks AGO	TODAY	IMPROVEMENT
50m	0:51	0:46	5sec!
100m	1:55	1:40	15sec!!
200m	4:17	3:43	34sec!!!

Ahhhh... basking in the glory of having the best improvement in the class. :-)

I set a goal for myself at the beginning that I wanted to be at least as fast as the 20-something, university student/swim instructor in the class by the time we finished. I always felt so slow next to her and tonight we were paired up during our timed laps. I couldn't wait to see if I would be able to keep up. The first set, 50m, we finished exactly the same! She improved on her time by 1sec, so that means I was 1sec faster than her original time! And I would have beat her if I could do the damn flip-turn at the wall too!

Then it was our turn to swim the 100m... I focused on trying to get a faster turn at the wall and it paid off - I BEAT her by 3 seconds!! And then I learned I had beat my previous time by a full 15 seconds!! I was over-the-moon.

Finally our 200m - I didn't win this match up, but I was only 2 or 3 seconds behind and I'm pretty sure I matched her original 200m time, which is all I was looking for anyway. Plus I swam 34 seconds faster than my original time - 34 SECONDS! That's more than half a minute in a sub-4 min distance!! MAJOR improvement!!

It's funny how when I SET A GOAL, a specific, measurable goal, I reach it. I can't think of one goal, one that I REALLY wanted, that meant something to me, that I've set and didn't reach. WOW! That's powerful stuff... Have you set any goals lately?

P.S. I've recently fixed the comment option so name/anonymous posts work now - leave a comment below with your goals!