How do I dislike swimming, let me count the ways..........
The Outlaws are entered as a team in the USAT National Challenge Competition. It's a pretty informal competition between teams to see who can log the most training miles per month. December is supposed to be the "Swim Session" month.
http://www.race-tracker.net/usat/
Straight away, it's always difficult for me to motivate myself to go for a swim. First off, I have to go to "the pool". (I can start a bike or run from my own driveway.) And I can only go to "the pool" during their scheduled "open swim sessions" when I'm not at work. For me, this means early in the morning (lose an hour of sleep) or in the evening (loss of family time and time to grade papers). "The pool" is used by a lot of people, but not many of them are "swimming". Senior citizens do a lot of water walking, and other folks like to float on their backs in a lane with a lifebelt to hold them up. (I'm sure they are telling their heart surgeons that they are getting in their "X"-hours of cardio per week.) Most times I can get at least half a lane to swim some laps, but there are days when I have to wait in order to start a workout. And then there is the smell of chlorine. I always shower with soap after a swim, but I can smell the chlorine afterwards, my wife always mentions how she smells it, and even my students in class said I smelled like chlorine.
Regardless, I figured I would do my bit for the team and try to log 20 miles of swimming this month. I know this is not a lot of miles for some triathletes, and if you look at the standings there are already people on some other teams with more than 50 swim miles this month. However, I normally only get in about 8-12 miles of swimming per month, and I've never in my life done more than 16 miles in one month. Throw in the limited days that the local pool is even open because of their "holiday schedule" along with the end of semester workload at school, and 20 miles of swimming was always going to be a challenge.
As of today, (Christmas Eve), I've been to the pool seventeen times and logged 18.65 miles. I'd like to say that it has been worth the time and effort and that I am now a much faster swimmer. However, although I might be a leetle faster (and I'm certainly no slower), it has not made a huge difference. Mostly, I just smelled like chlorine a lot of the time.
Where I did see a difference was in my bike and run fitness. In order to get in this amount of swimming (while keeping up with work, paying the bills, Christmas shopping, etc.) I spent almost no time on my bike or running. I've often thought that if I never raced a triathlon I would still ride my bike and run, but I probably wouldn't bother swimming. I don't swim hard enough to get in much of a cardio workout, and I could feel the difference after two weeks. I did some biking and running this weekend, and it sure felt good to be back on the road.
January is supposed to be the "Bike Session". I'm personally looking forward to getting out and logging some bike miles. Can't imagine what the teams in Michigan are going to do?
muffinman
3 comments:
The cool thing about swimming is that as soon as you get a little faster it never really leaves you. All those HS and college swimmings are stinking fast after taking years off.
Try out some chlorine neutralizing soap. I got some at Wally World and it works....kinda.
Just think how much better you will bike after your more efficient swim leaves nice and fresh......
Muffin-I had to LAUGH when I read about the senior citizens. I have been in pools where really big people have told H that he cannot share a lane with them because "we don't have rules like that here" and "you splash too much" OMG-those peeps drive me nuts!! Probably bad karma for me to say that-i may have that pool belt on some day..
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