A tweet that just might keep me going

I am working hard at trying to put this fat, old body into some kind of shape. I started going back to my wellness center and have slowly started adding in the weights along with the cardio training. Madison had to join the YMCA to work on the active portion of her CAS project for school, and since I have to drive her there I signed up too. She and I take yoga once a week, and while I enjoyed the first class, last night's class wasn't my favorite. But that is another story. The Y also has an indoor pool, and since my mom died I have decided that I need to get back into the water.

I've spent my life swimming. My mother was a swimming teacher who put me in the pool at an early age. I grew up swimming on teams and then went on to coach those teams, lifeguard, teach swimming and water aerobics, and run a pool. Somewhere along the lane lines, after having kids, swimming laps ended for me. I would swim and the next day have neck pain. Every time we would go to a pool I would swim 200 yards or so just to see, and while that was fine, swimming farther seemed to bother me so I just gave it up.

Lately though, I've been looking at pictures on Instagram of a retired athlete who swims daily. I follow Charlie Batch, retired back up quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who I've written about in this blog back when he played. I've always loved and believed in Charlie when he played and so I followed him on social media. He swims every day and always posts his time and a picture. I decided that if Charlie could do it, then so could I, and so I got back into the pool.

Darcy and I went on Tuesday night to the Y. We shared a lane with two small girls, no more then ten years of age. They were good swimmers. Darcy was there to work her shoulder per her physical therapist's advice, and I was there to start my Charlie Batch swimming routine. It went really well, although I was tired. I pushed myself, but when I woke up the next day I felt pretty good. I had some soreness in my arms, but that was about it. Feeling thrilled with that, I tweeted:

I wanted to let him know that his daily picture and tweet of his swim motivated me. I think it is important to give credit where credit is do so I tweeted. Then I promptly forgot about it and went about my day. Around three o'clock, Darcy and I were in an accounting office at a country club dealing with some estate stuff when my phone alerted me to the fact that someone had tweeted. I only have family tweets that go to my phone so I waited a bit before I calmly pulled out my phone to find this:

OMG! Charlie Batch tweeted me! He didn't just retweet me. He tweeted me some encouragement! I had to control myself not to jump up out of my my chair and jump up and down. I once read a tweet from a celebrity who was talking about how sad it was that people got so excited about retweeting from celebrities, and I had to agree with the man. But I have to say, that getting a tweet from Charlie Batch changed that because the feeling I got from his encouragement made me want to go swimming right away. Despite the fact that my neck had gone into spasms early that morning. Thanks Charlie! I will slug through it somehow because I know you have faith in me!