Swimming

Seeing that Destination Imagination (DI) had been here for a week and that most events should be wrapping up, I thought that today would be a good day to get to the pool and do some laps. Uh, think again.

When I crested the hill that leads to the Aquatic Center, I could see that the DI minions were swarming around. The sand volleyball court was having a great game going on. The water slide had a line of 10 or 12 individuals waiting to propel themselves on slick wet plastic only to land in a pool of water to avoid smashing their head on the concrete. The water slide is like a Super-Sized SlipNSlide on Steroids.

The pool area has lots of kids and adults enjoying the water and the companionship of the other one billion people in the pool area. Despite the fact that there were a bunch of people out there, it did look like the area designated for laps had a few empty lanes. So, I decided that I would explore the possible opportunity of swimming today.

I proceeded to the pool with book in hand. I was either going to spend the entire reading the book and basking out in the sun or I was going to swim some and then read a little.

Sure enough, there were 3 lanes to chose from to swim laps. Given the fact that I planned on swimming 800 meters, I knew that I wouldn’t need the entire time to swim, so I sat down and broke open the book. After reading for a few minutes, it was time to do my laps.

The pool can be configured into 2 configurations. There is the short course, this is where the lanes for laps are strung across the width of the pool. This configurations provide a greater number of lanes, but the length of a lap is 25 yards. The other configuration is what I call the Long Course. Since the pool is Olympic sized, the length of the pool lengthwise is [ed: Thanks to ShirleyPerly for pointing out that the correct distance is 50 meters, not 100 meters like I stated] 100 meters. However, there are only 8 lanes that are available for laps. However, the math of distance by laps is much easier and the Long Course simulates swimming in open water better because of the longer distance before a wall.

So, my plan was to swim 18 laps, and keep splits times in groups of 3 laps. This way 3 groups would be 9 laps or 411 meters, which is my baseline for how I am doing in the pool. The First group of laps, I took a break between the groups… so 3 laps, break, 3 laps, break, 3 laps, break. The second group I didn’t take any breaks, so I swam the 9 laps without break.

When I got back to my desk and recorded the split times, it was rather odd… check it out:

Group 1:
3 laps: 2:40
3 laps: 3:02
3 laps: 3:02
Total: 8:44

Group 2:
3 laps: 2:55
3 laps: 3:06
3 laps: 3:06
Total: 9:07

If the numbers scare you or if you are allergic to numbers, the 2 and 3 set of laps are identical to each other in both Groups! Very strange! So my workout went pretty well today… I am very pleased with it.

Looking forward to the 3 day weekend. We don’t have anything planned yet and the weather looks like it will be pretty nice for the next few days. Everyone have a great Memorial Day, well, those of you who are in the United States and celebrating the date. For everyone else, have a happy Monday May 28th!

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