Updates on swim and parkour

It's been a while since I've blogged about my exercise activities. I'm still doing parkour and swimming, still loving both. My parkour balancing is getting much better - a couple weeks ago we were walking on the handicapped ramp hand rails at the high school and I made it about 2/3 of the way up the path. Probably about 20 feet, which isn't that far, but it was for me and I felt good about it! It was a big confidence booster, and I'm working on longer, higher routes on bars. I also got up for the second time on the column that I feel off of - it felt way easier the second time. I was going to try it yesterday, but there were a bunch of kids around and I felt nervous. Another day.

I'm loving the open water swimming - who knew it was so fun?! The water is much warmer now, it's up to like 60 degrees. Still cold, but I've stayed in for a half hour a couple times. Some of the folks swim in the race, the memphremagog winter festival, which is in northern Vermont in February. It's a swim race, and they cut a 25 meter by two lane hole in the ice and have a three day event. And so of course I had to sign up for it next year, because I'm crazy like that. It just sounded so fun - the water is like 30 degrees, so it's freezing up as you are getting in, and they have to keep scooping ice off the top. Each athlete gets their own escort to take you to the water, a stripper to help you disrobe and get dressed again, and a hooker who walks next to you as you are swimming with a long hook, and fishes you out if you look like you're going to drown. What could go wrong? 

Now, of course, I'm working on my swimming. I looked back in my blog and I took swim lessons in 2018, but never really got the breathing thing going. I've been staying in the water and getting better at things for a couple weeks now. I started doing the breast stroke for a swim, going first to this tree, and then past the tree to the next one, etc. Now I can swim for about 20 minutes - with my crawl being maybe 5 minutes of it. I've gotten to a point where I can do about 15 strokes, all breathing on the left, before I have to stop. It's a work in progress, but one I hope to get better at. It's still cold putting my face in the water, but I've been doing it. My goal is to be able to swim 25 meters, of course, for the festival, but then to swim more so it's good exercise. It's so much more fun in open water than in the pool! I can see myself continuing with this for a while.