Swimming, swimming in the swimming pool

when days are hot or days are cold oh wouldn't it be nice to do.... side stroke, breast stroke and fancy diving too, oh wouldn't it be nice if we had nothing else to do but swimming swimming in the swimming pool.....Ok sorry some little chant I remember from when I was a kid.

Anyhow guess what EYE did this morning.. yeap you guessed it, I swam - now I'm not fast by any means, and that's ok, I'm just happy I'm finding that I'm able to swim, non-stop (well cept for having to turn at each end since I can't do flip turns YET) for distance.... oh not the distance I read about some doing... but I'm working my way that way... Its funny but the other week I just made myself do it and I found if I take my time, concentrate on breathing, I can go longer... so today was 1250 yards of total swimming for me... I know not much for some of you, but do remember prior to Oct 2006, I could not even swim one length of the pool at all and TODAY it was 25 laps or 50 lengths.

I use to swim 2 lengths of the pool and feel all out of breathe, but I found if I just kept going, it did get easier, you get into a rhythm and your breathing calms down - kind of like the first 1/2 mile of a run... I always feel like I'm not going to make a mile the way I'm breathing, but then you relax and settle into it and it seems to get easier, well swimming has turned out to be the same - so for now I'm just going for distance and I'll worry with speed later.

So I'm working my way up to 36 laps (1 lap = 2 lengths of the 25 yard pool) and that, according to signage at the gym, is 1 mile of swimming - today was 25 laps, non stop and I probably COULD have done 10 more but that ole time limit and having to get ready for work thing came upon me.

Now of course how this will translate to open water and wetsuit swimming and triathlon with lots of peeps around ya is anybody's guess, but I did sprint distances last season and didn't drown, and NOW at least I know I can go the swim distance of an olympic length tri... and I THINK if I can do that without a wet suit in the pool... I should be able to do it in open water with security of a wetsuit - it was odd but the fact of peeps around me didn't really freak me out as much as I thought when I did tri's last year... I'm sure it was the practice I got from swimming lessons with tri club, and Kevin and Kristin playing triathlon with me in the pool...

Of course siting in open water is another issue, but all things in time right!