Trail Aquatic Centre

Mission Accomplished!

Posted on by Aerin Bowers

What a year!

What started as what can only be called an annus horribilis (accent on annus) ended brilliantly as a number of things in my life started to reset and align. I feel like I have a new brain and a new body. All I need now is a new training playlist for the hours I’ll log in the pool over the next few months.

Let’s get this out of the way before moving on to the good shit: I wasn’t successful in my application for the Lake Zurich Swim. This was expected, but I was still a little disappointed. I only allowed one single tear to roll down the right side of my face. I will apply again for 2020 and my application will stand a much greater chance. All the fondue will be mine. ALL THE FONDUE!

OK – the good shit:

I hit my training goal of 200,000 metres this morning!

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My favourite screen capture of 2018. 

With just 1900 m to go, I hauled my  sleepy ass down to the Trail Aquatic Centre and knocked out an easy workout that culminated in a deep dive down to the bottom of the pool to rescue some kid’s sunken goggles, and then a delicious soak in the hot tub.

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My home away from home: The Trail Aquatic Centre

I followed that up with a slack-country ski date with a good pal and a restorative nap during which I did indeed dream of sugar plums. It felt great to hit the milestone and even better to think that next year I might double it.

My training did slow down with the busy-ness of December, and the pleasant distraction of skiing taking priority.  While swimming is my brain and body, skiing is truly my heart. I spent a few romantic (squeee) days at the International Hostel in Lake Louise exploring the myriad of cross-country trails and a bluebird day of downhill with the cute German boyfriend, who insisted on carrying my skis. This has never happened before and I am still crowing on about it. He carried my skis!

I had a house full of my beloved family visiting for Christmas and one much needed rest day with Netflix, pillows, and cookie snarfing. And maybe some leftover Bailey’s.

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Christmas skiing fam jam

Next up is New Year’s Eve and then I will start to work on creating my swimming plans and resolutions for 2019.

I love New Year’s Resolutions. Partly because I love to break them and make them all over again, but also because I’m someone who loves lists and lists of goals and plans and frameworks and systems. It’s the perfect time to reflect on the year that was and to set some goals for the year ahead before everything gets busy and crazy.

2018 was my most challenging year in many ways…but somehow it magically turned into one of my best years with a whole open sky of clear sailing (and swimming!) for 2019.

Some preliminary highlights of 2018 include:

  • Starting this blog. I really love writing, so it’s been healthy and motivating to document my progress, warts, deadbeats and all.
  • Kicking off my distance training with a solid plan from the Prairie Girls Swim Squad that I actually followed. Can we have another one for 2019, please?
  • epic 3 day Kootenay Lake swim with the awesome Steven family
  • completing my first Lake Skaha Ultra Swim
  • my destination swim trip to London to experience the lidos and the Serpentine Swim
  • achieving my 200,000 metre training goal
  • HE CARRIED MY SKIS!

I’ll have more to say about 2018 in the upcoming days as I formulate a few swimming “Best of ” lists.

Thank you for all of your encouragement (not you, Glen) and comments this year – and thanks for reading! May your towel be warm and dry, and your goggles unfoggy. Happy New Year!

Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows (to Zurich?)

Posted on by Aerin Bowers

The snow is falling outside my cozy Rossland home. Ski season is approaching, and with it comes all of the feelings of excitement and anticipation that I revel in every year.

And while I’m pumped to slay the fresh Kootenay powder very soon, I’m racking up my pool kilometres and focusing on my 200,000 metre training goal for the year. This week I swam in Castlegar while my daughter did her practicum for her Water Safety Instructor course, and in Trail at the Aquatic Centre. It was great to spend time in my local pools after a few weeks of back to back work travel. I’m swimming shorter workouts (averaging 3- 4 km each time) and concentrating on drills and form.

And as the end of a year with a lot of goals approaches, I’ve been making some big plans for next year.

The biggest is a trip to Switzerland in August to attempt the 32nd Annual Sri Chinmoy Marathon Swim across Lake Zurich. It’s a 26 km event and it would be amazing – IF I get in. That’s big IF.

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I applied for a spot in the event this week. A disclaimer on the site warns first-time swimmers that spaces are first allotted to those who have applied but not been selected from previous years. So, it’s a bit of a long shot, but I only have to wait until December 15 to see if my application is successful. Those who know me will know that while the previous sentence might claim nonchalance, there is nothing I hate more than waiting. For anything. Especially when it looks like this much fun.

And if my application is successful, then this swim would represent my most epic to date. Lake Zurich is 26 km long. The swim starts in Rapperswil and ends in Zurich. Swimmers go past several Swiss Alp towns en route to the finish, so I could easily stop for a cheese and chocolate fondue. I signed up in the no-wetsuit category, since I’ve been informed that the European lakes are recently very warm in the summer, and Lake Zurich is likely to be warmer than 22 degrees in August. Plus, can you imagine the neck chafing? No cheese is gonna help with that.

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I’m reminded of how I felt when I registered for the Skaha Ultra Swim. At 11.8 km, it was much longer than any event I’d ever attempted, and I understood clearly how necessary a focused training plan would be. For this greater challenge, the usual questions emerge:

  • Can I physically do this?
  • Why do I want to do this?
  • How will I fit in enough training with X and Y going on in my life?
  • Am I nuts?
  • Why is Glen reading my blog?
  • What are the steps?

The application itself is the first step. A conscious commitment to extending my distances through careful and deliberate planning and prioritizing is a close second. It’s not that I finished any of my longer distances this year with energy to spare, but rather that I feel suddenly able to tap into a newfound endurance that I never knew I had. And it isn’t just physical, although I have noticed that my fitness and  strength have markedly increased in the last few months. I even did a few handstand pushups this week. There’s nothing like being upside down to bring some fresh blood into the brain.

Which leads me to step 3 –  mindset, especially with regard to this surge of energy.  It’s also that I’m unencumbered by the former roadblocks that kept my confidence low. I’m starting to see my own life in a much more expansive sense, and I feel like the future is wide open. I’m not exactly wearing shades (prescription sunglasses are too expensive), but I’m far more curious and unafraid than I was 6 months ago when I could hardly get through a workout without literally stimming on negative thoughts. The swimming successes of the past summer also play a major role in focusing on building my potential. I had no idea that I’d be able to consistently keep up the training I needed to do. But I did, and I think it’s all down to focus and that a person like me really deeply needs goals and milestones.

A person I respect said to me recently, “Where attention goes, energy flows.” And although I’m not big on mantras (I prefer mantas), I honestly say this to myself, despite myself, several times a day. It seeps into planning my swim workouts, my nutrition, my cross-training, and all of the other things I do in this open water life and life on land. BECAUSE IT’S TRUE. Try it, you’ll like it.

If I’m not selected for the Lake Zurich Swim I will cry for a day and then work to build a back up plan. A back up plan that involves chocolate and cheese, but maybe a different destination and a different direction for my attention (and my fondue) to flow.

 

It’s the Time of the Season for Swimming…and Pie

Posted on by Aerin Bowers

First things first. It is so beautiful in Rossland in October.

Photo Credit: the amazing Don Conroy

I think about moving a lot – there would be some benefits to my social life, my airport situation, and my access to things I love like art, cinema, concerts, and new restaurants. At the end of every summer I start looking at real estate listings on the Island or the Lower Mainland. It’s like I’m programmed to spur on even more change, just as the leaves are turning colours. I feel like I also need to “shed” and reinvent and make a new start.

But somehow this season, my favourite season of all, elicits a feeling of settled-ness and happiness that keeps me in this spectacular place. Even though it’s expensive to swim due to a recreation funding conflict between Rossland and Trail, I cough up the cash for my membership at the Trail Aquatic Centre and start into the new season of a different kind of swimming.

I hike gloriously colourful trails with my dogs and I marvel, like the big sensitive nerd that I am, at the greens and oranges and reds of the leaves and soil and mountains. The sunrises are sublime – hot pink and orange from my bedroom window. The sunsets are slow, soft lavender, purple and blue. When the clouds roll in, the contrast of metal grey with the blue sky almost chokes me up. Told you I was a big nerd. Nature astounds me.

It’s more important for me to live and breathe and BE in this amazing place than it is to see the films that showed at TIFF in September or have a wider variety of shirtless, fish-holding prospects on Tinder.

Many of the swimmers I follow on social networks are able to continue their open water training outdoors, and it does indeed look fabulous to swim in 12 degree lidos or Welsh lakes in the middle of October. But there is something about settling into a season with what you have available that is comforting and valuable and even reassuring. I like the pool. I love the hot tub afterwards, even the pee. I like the people there, and choosing locker #69 every time because I am a 14 year old boy at heart. I like driving home in the dark in my farty old sweatpants and listening to the CBC. I like eating 15 pieces of toast in my kitchen and waking up the next morning with the most epically chlorinated bed head ever. It’s truly a sight to behold and way better than Lady Gaga in A Star is Born or even Beyoncé.

Having taken a 2 week break from the pool since returning from England, I decided to start a completely new program from scratch – one that will lead me into a 10k destination swim in January (to be revealed later!). Starting at a 3k training baseline, I’ll work my way up to 8 km in the pool by mid December. I have a number of technical goals to work on this fall, including improvements to my rotation and my current straight-armed recovery. There’s a lot of kick, and even more pull. My weight training program is focused on building the upper body power I need to conquer longer swims, and includes specific exercises to increase my core and shoulder strength. It feels more planned than ever before, which is weird for a spontaneous nut like me, but as it turns out, there are wise people who have already thought of these things and confronted these challenges. Who knew? I thought I knew everything.

My daughter Scarlet and I are celebrating our Canadian Thanksgiving this year as “NoFucksGiving”, due to our acceptance and resignation with a particularly sad and frustrating situation that has taken up much of our emotional space over the last few weeks. We heal. We let the system take control. We gravitate to those that make us feel good. We take long walks. We swim. We accept invitations for care and love and support. We eschew a big dinner and a whole day preparing it for a dinner consisting entirely of a beautiful pumpkin pie from Mountain Nugget. We’ll join good and generous friends for even more dessert, and settle in to watch creepy movies on Netflix in our pajama bottoms and coziest hoodies.

So why would I move?

I’m already moving. I’m changing, swimming, hiking, running, and waking to beautiful sunrises. I have everything I need here. I have a 10 k in January. So yes, maybe it should be “SomeFucksGiving” – but only for things worth giving fucks about. I think those things are pretty clear to me now, and abundant here in this place, and only become more clear with every length and flip turn and bite of delicious pie.

There’s no place like home, my homies.