A lane excuse

Today it was sprints: swimming as fast as you can for short distances. Sprints are a lot of fun because you can give 100% if you know you're just going to do it for 30 seconds or so. You get to the end knowing that you gave your all, and then you plenty of time to catch you breath and do it again. Today, however, the coach decided that he was not going to give us time to rest. We kept going 100 yards after 100 yards with maybe 5 seconds rests.

When I'm swimming with fins, it is a lot easier to rest; I kick a little harder once and glide effortlessly. But the guy in front of me didn't have fins and by the last 25 yards, he was slowing down. His slowing down forced me to slow down as well, so every time I felt him in front of me, I had to take a forced "gliding" rest. After a few hundreds, though, it was annoying. His bubbles ahead of my were annoying, his choppiness was annoying... and because we were not resting for more than a second, I couldn't tell him to let me go ahead of him. I was stuck.

Suddenly, I noticed the lane ahead had only two people and a girl there asked me if I wanted to join them. I hesitated, thought about it for another 100 and then I switched lanes happily! Ha! It only took 200 to miss the "forced" resting sessions. After 75 yards of giving 100%, I missed the bubbles, I missed the choppiness, I missed having an excuse to slow down and rest for a bit. But I was so tired... that I took my rest without having an excuse; just because I needed it (sound of ego deflating).

How many time do we blame others around us for not letting us reach our potential? The boyfriend who doesn't like to go hiking, or the mother that doesn't cook healthy food are our excuse for not working out or loosing weight. Having and excuse is easy and changing is hard, so we leave things like they, and feel stuck, blaming others for not changing.

Just change lanes... and leave your lame excuse behind.