Today, the “Try-It” women showed up for our first triathlon swim training class. It was a little splurge, but as we don’t normally take classes like this and several of us have not been swimming since we were children, and some of us have never been swimming at all, this was a necessary splurge. In fact, I have to tell you that it felt completely strange to swim in a pool after years of mostly being on guard with kids while near water! But leave it to these women to get me in that pool doing something I hadn’t done in years. We each swam for our instructor and he said to us, “Well, I can tell you are used to running because you look like a bunch of runners trying to swim.” I guess we need to learn a lot. I was just happy that he called us “runners”.
Three years ago, when I was determined to get healthy once again and splurged on a running class, I met several wonderful women who also had the same goal. One of those women, Jeanine, expressed the same difficulty that I had—the motivation and determination to reach my healthy goals. One of the goals we shared was to run a 5K for the first time in our lives. We started to email one another to meet to run or do strength training. As we trained, other women started to want to be put on our email list to meet together with us. Our group has gained and lost members over the three years, but together we have formed a group that I now nickname the “Try-It” Women in honor of their new exercise challenge.
It’s a fluid group. Many of us are too busy with family for “girls weekends” or even to get lunch or coffee together. We only have this one hour a day where our kids can be supervised. Our weekday splurge is to use our hour to meet together and talk, encourage, and give tips to one another while we exercise. Whoever can meet each day, comes, and whoever cannot, meets up with the group when she can. This is the way it has been for three years and from that philosophy we have accomplished goals that I would never have been able to accomplish on my own, knowing myself! We have tried several different types of exercise challenges such as weight training and tabata, ran our first 5K, ran several different 5K’s and included other women along with us as they trained for their first 5K’s. At the beginning of October, a large portion of the group recently did their first half marathon. Now, the “Try-It” women have added a new challenge: the triathlon! With the support and friendship of these women, this challenge is one that I’ve decided to push myself to try. Did I ever see myself considering a triathlon before this? Never. To think it all started with two women emailing to meet each day to exercise a little bit together. Now, the question is "can I actually DO a triathlon….?"?? It’s only day one…
No comments:
Post a Comment