Morning Masters Swimming Trajectory

I've noticed a very typical cascade of emotions that regularly accompanies my early morning 5K Masters swim workouts.  For my peers in the sport, maybe you can relate.  For anyone else, maybe you experience this with other exercise challenges.  Either way, I got a good laugh out of it, and it's pretty insightful as to why "just showing up" is really half the battle...

Night Before Sad.  This is an improvement on what used to be "anxious" when I first joined the group, but only marginally.  When I worked for a consulting firm I often had to travel from Monday-Thursday, catching a very early morning flight.  On Sunday afternoons, I would get what I called the "Consulting Blues" when packing my suitcase for the week. This is significantly less, but slightly reminiscent.

4:30AM Indifferent.  At this point, I have tunnel vision toward coffee. My task is to make it and drink it, and that is where all my focus is.

5:15 Creative. I find myself thinking "Maybe today should be a rest day," or "I haven't prioritized a run in a while, I wonder what Coach would say if I ran first and just did my own swim after."

5:30 Cold. What's nice about this is that much like the coffee that came before it, en route to the pool, I'm just focused on trying to get warm, so there are no negative emotions, simply a primal drive to warm up.

5:50 Rushed.  Funny how after everything I laid out above, I hurry up and rush in the locker room to ensure I don't miss 100 meters of warmup.

6:00 Anxious.  Oh the warm-up.  Can't go without it (trust me, I've tried, miserable result) but it's literally equivalent to needing to stare at the 6-inch needle (Coach Mohammad) prior to the Epidural (the main set).

6:20-7:25 On.  This is the beauty of swimming with a group, most of whom are faster than you.  I have no choice but to just swim.  The god-honest truth is I generally don't have enough time in between intervals/sets to do any thinking, so I just swim.

7:25-8:00 Euphoric.  My arms feel like rubber, my form is lost, but I'm cooling down!!

8:00-8:15. Rushed.  Got to get to work, whether that be another shorter training session or the office.

Post Training for the Morning: Happy. Hungry.  I've never done a Masters workout I regret, and I've never not been pretty ravaged at 10AM on a Mon/Wed/Fri.