persevering

So on Saturday I had a swim meet which I was super nervous about because I entered myself into 800metres Freestyle. And I had never swam that long in a race before. It also didn't help that at tumbling 3 hours before I was practising my round off back-handspring backtuck and obviously at least on of them have to fail and I land on my middle finger which comes out as a purple bruise. So anyway that meet was held at the worst ever pool to swim backstroke in but thank goodness there was no backstroke; Coastlands Aqautic Centre (Kapiti). Previously I've done a few races there so I was quite familiar with the pool. You could choose to swim 400metres Freestyle, 1500 metres freestyle and 800.

It was time to race, the butterflies in my stomach were flipping and I didn't feel good. My googles also felt too tight on my head so I took them off and loosened them. They still didn't feel right but the whistle to get on the blocks had blown so I had to forget about it. The race had started. Oh no. My googles. They slipped a little bit off my head. "Thank god they actually stayed on!" I thought, but I had to do something about it. So as I pulled my hand out of the water to go into another stroke I grabbed my googles and pulled them down. Slowly it took a few more strokes for them to be back in place. Everything was going smoothly now and I was super happy I fixed my problem

Just as I thought nothing could get better I slipped on the opposite wall (it was really, really slippery!!!) and again and again! Oh no. But I got over it and finished the race with actually pretty good times which I was super surprised about.

I showed perseverance when I pulled my googles back into place and had to get my head back into the game and when I slipped I thought about it and how I could prevent it next time. Perseverance is probably easiest for me and the most challenging is maybe creativity because you have to think of a new and different way of dong something