Post-Workout Malaise

My husband, the Pigeon Spouse, says that exercise will make me feel great.  He's always urging me to go swim at the Y.  After we put our baby to bed, he says as nonchalantly as possible, "You should go swim."  Like he might say, "Maybe I'll cut my toenails" or "Let's watch TV."  He's watching me even as he turns away and pretends not to watch me.  

I pretend not to feel irritated by his suggestion.  "Sure," I say, and then I find some way to stall, even going so far some evenings as to do the dishes, until it's too late to swim.  "Darn.  The pool is closed now."  

Tonight I headed out to the Y for the first time in over a month.  I had been on vacation in Ohio, having taken the spud to see the grandparents, and then two weeks ago I stepped in a hole in the backyard and broke my leg.  (Technically, I merely twisted my knee and created a teensy, weensy fracture in the top of my tibia, a couple millimeters long, but it still counts as breaking my leg in my book because it hurts and has greatly impeded my lifestyle.)  "You should go swim,"  Pigeon Husband very carefully suggested after dinner.  Okay.  If I must.  

On the way to the pool I  stopped at the drugstore to buy him generic Claritin ($3.51 cheaper) and at Trader Joe's to buy myself dark chocolate almond Laceys cookies.  I wrestled the plastic seal from the tub and ate three on the way to the Y and one more on the way through the parking lot to the door.  

Swimming tonight was not so satisfactory.  It is almost the only form of exercise I enjoy, and until recently, swimming and I have had a loathe/hate relationship.  In recent years, however, I have overcome some pyschological trauma caused in my teen years by a wicked-cold lake in northern Michigan, mandatory lifeguard training for a camp counseling job, and my mannish negative buoyancy, which did little to enhance my self-esteem:  if I'm going to sink and fail the course, can I at least have some boobs?  I ate a lot of chocolate milk and fish sticks that summer, trying to bulk up.  I went from 110 to a whopping 118 pounds of pure muscle, I think. At any rate, at 35 I forgave my skinny 17 year old ass for failing the lifeguard course (not my fault!) and began to enjoy swimming.  I learned to breathe on opposite sides, every third stroke, during the front crawl, and to slowly release bubbles in a continuous streaming exhalation to prevent that bursting, gasping feeling.  Since I renewed my Y membership this past fall, I've come a long way in my front crawl form.  I can even do two consecutive lengths without my heart pounding too much.  (Avoiding that heart-pounding feeling is one of my exercise goals.  PH says my heart ought to pound.  This makes me distrust his judgement.)

Tonight, as I said, swimming was not so good.  Two whip kicks into an abortive breast stroke  told me that my knee is NOT ready for this.  I swam ten lengths of a very slow crawl (might have gone faster literally crawling on deck) before the knee began to pop and ache.  Four more lengths convinced me that I'd reached my limit.

Hobbling to the locker room, I felt angry.  Impotent and angry.  My knee did not break itself.  I did not break it.  I have never been injured, never.  I am an ox.  An aurox, even.  Medieval and unflappable.  And extinct.  I showered and styled my hair very badly with the hair dryer provided by the Y.  Ate two more cookies in the car on the way home.  

As I parked the car in front of the house and stuffed the cookies into my gym bag, I wondered about the best adjective to describe that action:  ironic?  pathetic?  shameful?  rebellious?  morose?  Who will have sympathy for me?  Who will condemn me?  Will I ever have a healthy relationship with junk food?  Do I want one?  

These are the circumstances contributing to my post-workout malaise this evening.  Yeah, exercise makes me feel great.