Thursday, June 4, 2009

Swimming in a bathtub...



Have you ever wondered what it might be like to swim in a giant bathtub? I got my chance to experience it first hand this morning. You might wonder what exotic locale I journeyed to in order to experience such a pleasure. Surely it was some pricey spa, right? Not exactly. Having been MIA from masters swim practice for the past 2 weeks, I made an appearance this morning. I LOVE masters at Lifetime for one single solitary reason. We get to swim outside. There is nothing better. Only the masters group is allowed in the outdoor pool at that hour and since we have so few people in the group, we are further spoiled by not having to share a lane. For those of you who aren't swimmer-types, I can assure you that having your own lane is quite the luxury. No one to politely banter with about which is slower and therfore must go last. No one to accidentally kick as you are doing breast stroke. No one to blindy run into as you are doing backstroke (which would happen a lot at this pool as it is outside and has not backstroke flags so it is difficult at best to maintain a straight line down the lane). So anyhow, back to the bathtub story...

Normally, you brace yourself for frigid impact first thing in the morning. It can be like diving into a vat of ice water. I did my usual jump in and prepare to get moving to get the blood flowing - my feet hit the water and - what the??? I have had baths that had cooler water temperature. Call me crazy but I like my swims to be cool and refreshing. The story was they had the pool heater on for a few days or something like that, not exactly sure. In any case, it has been close to 90 here so there was no need for a pool heater. It did make it difficult to swim. I am not sure if it was a mental thing or if there was something to the higher temp. I assume it would be like running on a hot day. It just made me want to get out of the pool and get some air after each set.

The workout was fun as usual. This group is a coached workout but it feels a little more relaxed like you are just swimming with your friends. The coach hands out the workouts and basically we just chat during the rest interval which is perfect for me since I am just trying to get yardage in within getting bored. Today, I ended up swimming a shorter set. I put in 2100 meters of freestyle. It was a variation of drills, pulling and kicking working on descending times for each set.

In other news, on Monday my tennis team won their semi final match and have made it to the finals which will be played this coming Monday. WOO HOO! If we win there, we get to go to the state championship in November. I have been jumped full force back into tennis again. I missed it quite a bit when I scaled back for the marathon training.

I am still debating on the 70.3. I will probably end up doing it but might approach it as more of a "just finish it" type race so my training can be more low key. I have registered and that is half the battle. Do I lose the registration or just suck it up and do the race? hmmmm....

The big home news today is that we finally got a scanner! Rick was quite excited and I am pretty sure I won't see him for weeks as he is knee deep in photos that he has been dying to scan and share. He did allow me to use the new toy for a few photos. Family and friends beware, all those photos you thought were long gone may come back to haunt you :)

1 comment:

Lindsay said...

you gotta do augusta! why are you debating it? time? that thing is expensive, i couldn't not-do it now! but, it is definitely something you want to train sufficiently for so you don't collapse at mile 2. :)

i wish i was a good swimmer. i would have no issues being the last to start in a shared lane since i know i am the slowest! i get so tense sharing a lane though, all that pressure.