Where has this summer gone? It seems like just yesterday, I was complaining about how hot it was. The second half of August started out very cool and damp, with a persistent NE wind due to an offshore hurricane. The wind dumped a huge mess of tulip poplar leaves in the pool, prompting me to cover it with a leaf net, and costing us about a week of swimming. Then, the weather turned dry, pleasant and fall-like. We could really use some rain at this point, but the sunny weather has been good for swimming. The pool temperature has been a consistent 80-82, and the leaves have been fairly manageable for this time of year.

I have temporarily stopped swimming backstroke while I work on my kicking technique. I’ve been trying to eliminate “bicycling” by speeding up my kick cadence and kicking from my hips/glutes (sort of a fluttering motion) instead of my legs. I’ve gotten to the point where it feels comfortable with front crawl, but backstroke is still a work in progress. I’m still not 100% sure I’m doing it correctly, but I think it’s an improvement. My larger goal is to try to avoid issues with tight calves, which have really been a problem this summer. Given where we are in the swimming season, I’m probably just going to stop backstroke altogether and plan to pick it back up next year.

The other thing I’ve been struggling with for the past week or so is dysautonomia. I have had periodic episodes since I was in my 20s, and nowadays, I’d say it happens once or twice a year on average. This past week was a particularly nasty flare-up. The primary symptoms are occasional queasiness, dizziness, palpitations, chest/shoulder tightness, and anxiety/uneasiness. When it first happened in my 20s, I had a stress test and echocardiogram to rule out heart issues, and ever since then, I’ve just sort of dealt with it when it happens. There’s not much to do other than wait it out (a typical episode lasts around a week), but some things that occasionally help include meditation, deep breathing, exercise, sound therapy (binaural beats), massage gun (lats, delts and pecs), and keeping myself mentally occupied. It seems to be abating now, as I write this, but I wanted to mention it here so I can refer back to this post in future years. I am curious if it’s something that crops up regularly at certain times of year.