Phở Sho

Yummmmmm.

Have you ever had Phở? It is a DELICIOUS Vietnamese soup. About 10 of us went out for some Phở tonight after swim practice - we kind of took over the little place with our chlorine-y aroma and bursts of laughter. I love this group.

In other news, I CAN SWIM. Holy crap. After more than three months of struggling to complete a measly 50 yards in the pool without feeling like I was going to die, I breezily strung together multiple sets of 200s tonight. I did 100s like they were going out of style. 50 yards? No problemo, señor. So what was it, you ask? What was holding me back all this time, making me feel like the worst swimmer in the history of ever? I was KICKING TOO DAMN HARD. That's it. CCCLLLLLLLLL.

I started to wonder at our last open water swim if that was the problem. My friend Marta mentioned that sometimes she actually forgets to kick. "Wha...?," I thought. "How can you forget to kick? You have to kick really hard to keep your back end up and reduce drag. ...don't you?" Turns out, NO YOU DON'T. Once you have your swimming form correct (as I have for months and months), your back end is already up. Light flutter kicking just gives you a little boost in forward propulsion. The main power is your arms (duh) and the rotation of your trunk. The minute I backed off on my kicking, voila! - I can swim.

I'm still ridiculously slow, but I could care less. I can move consistently through the water without feeling like I'm on the verge of aspirating large quantities of H2O. Finally.