By Paul Tenorio

Diving Back In Archive

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There are a lot of ways to use the word “kick.” It can translate to motor vehicles, to sport, to fighting, to smoking.

Let me count the ways.

Kick start.

Karate kick.

Mirko Cro Cop Kick.

Francesco Totti kick.

Kick the habit.

Slow kick(er).

Yes, that last link is me on Day One. And one thing that hasn’t changed since that day is the fact that when I kick I move slowly. As in Baby Beluga slow.

Never was that accentuated more than today, when I kicked more than a mile in practice — 1800 meters to be exact. Just sounds fun doesn’t it?

Here’s how the practice worked: As a treat, we got to swim in the lower pool which has been, for the most part, warmer than the normal pool by a good 10 degrees. Until today. Man, when I jumped in I was highly disappointed that it didn’t feel like the warm pool it had been in past weeks.

I guess it was still probably warmer than the upper, though, and I wasn’t going to go test it and find out.

Anyway…

What we did was swim boxes. In other words, we swam on the edge of the pool all the way around. That included the diving well. In total, it was about 100 meters with no walls to push off of. After one lap, we started a kick.

So:

Lap, 50 kick.
Lap, Two 50s kick.
Lap, Three 50s kick.
Lap, Four 50s kick.

Up to eight. Let’s just say I’m looking forward to the three-day, holiday weekend.

Cause when you don’t move that fast with your kick, man does it seem like it’s taking forever. Especially after focusing on legs yesterday.

Needless to say, I was the last to finish. With three 50s left on the day, Jeff King told his daughter, Jill, to be nice and run and get me a bagel.

“But he only has three 50s left, I won’t get back in time,” she said.

“At the pace he’s going you will,” he said, to the amusement of all.

Burn.

And to think, just five weeks ago he used to just serenade me with Raffi.

Washington Post reporter Paul Tenorio will train with a swim club over the next few months and chronicle his journey as he attempts to transform from regular guy/sports reporter to competitive swimmer — everything from his waistline to his best times.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Diving Back In. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.