Be Fit and Healthy

I have always wanted to exercise regularly but haven't clicked into something that motivated me until about 5 years ago. I have always been a "water baby" so my usual exercise was to go to my gym and lap swim with no plan or formal approach. then I saw a poster up at the gym for Triathletes to improve their swimming ability. I am no triathlete but I thought the swim coaching would be good. I loved it. I learned so much from working with a coach. She talked to me about open water swimming and once summer rolled around I tried it. I was hooked! there are a lot of wonderful, quirky people who race or just swim for pleasure in local rivers and lakes! I have loved joining up with "pods" of folks to swim together. I first joined the "River Huggers", a group that swims across the Willamette River in downtown Portland several times a week. It made exercising fun to do it with a group of "Make Portland Weird" types. How often do we just play with others? Since then I have joined the "Merfolk" and "Narwhal" swimmers. We encourage each other to swim faster, farther and even COLDER. There is a subgroup of us that is still doing outdoor swimming despite very cold temperatures--in safe, monitored conditions. My job is fairly stationary and I'm not one to get in many steps with walking but swimming with friends has helped me earn my "steps" and be fit and healthy.