First Dive Class

So, the adventure begins! Last night was the first night of dive class. I think the first words out of the instructor's mouth was tonight is going to be the hardest I'm going to work you. Reassuring and scary at the same time. My knee was doing pretty good for the whole day leading up to the class (of course I didn't do anything all day!). Then we started by walking from the pool building to the classroom, which happened to be uphill and the exact situation where I get the most discomfort in my knee.

The class consists of eleven people. Depressing part, I'm probably one of the oldest there. There are three couples, two guys by themselves, two twelve year old girls (labeled the trouble-makers) and myself. We all had to give introductions of why we were in the class and what our biggest fear was. When the instructor asked what my biggest fear was, my answer was getting married. I'm sure it wasn't exactly the answer he was looking for, but I really don't have any major concerns about diving. I figure if Jaws is coming after you, there's not much you can do about it. Doubt my answer earned me any brownie points, but I thought it was funny.

Since it was the first class, all the information was very basic. In some of the information was the course syllabus explaining what water tests we had to pass tonight. The one that caught my eye were the laps of the pool, ten of them. Now, I know I could do ten laps of my parents pool no problem, but I had a tough time imagining the pool we would be using would be the same size as my parents. Even though marriage is my biggest fear, my biggest concern of the night was if my knee would hinder me. The classroom part lasted about two hours, then it was off to the pool.

Sure enough, the pool was much bigger. Laps were first. Two full laps in, I was already gassed! Not doing anything physical for my knee for the past month, sure didn't help. The knee wasn't giving me any trouble at all, it was the rest of my body saying "what the hell are you doing, you're lazy, remember". All I could think was you better suck it up and keep going because if Becca learns that two 12 year old girls out swam you, I'd never hear the end of it! Now there's some motivation. Even with being gassed two laps in, I think I still finished second overall. Not bad for a out of shape, one legged gimp.

Next, was seeing how long we could hold our breath...except I didn't know that's what we were doing. The instructor had us take deep breaths and exhale slowly and counted down and I thought the point was to exhale completely then stick our faces in the water. Turns out he was timing us, LOL, think I came up in about six seconds. Fail! We did it a few more times, so luckily I didn't look like a complete wuss, once I figured out what we were doing. Now, if we got points for overall improvement, I think I would have won!

Test three was swimming half the length of the pool underwater, no problem. Fourth test was retrieving an 8 pound weight belt off the bottom of the pool, again no problem. Then the last test was basically treading water for twenty minutes. There was some variation, like not using your legs and dead man's float time thing. The only real challenge here was the boredom.

If that was the most challenging part, then I'll be in great shape, even with a bad knee. We were informed that this pool has the coldest water of all the pools they use...great! It wasn't too bad, but by the end it was starting to get chilly. Next week the wetsuit will get broken out and I believe we'll actually get to use equipment.