Saturday 1 January 2011

Only 498,100 metres to go!

New Years Day and the quest starts in earnest.  It’s amazing the things you do to avoid the things you have to do, I found myself this afternoon baking gingerbread and contemplating washing the car for goodness sake! If procrastination was an Olympic sport I'd be giving Michael Phelps a run for his money in the medal stakes. Anything to avoid that New Years day dip.

Anyway I eventually dragged myself to the pool and before you all start being impressed by my dedication to the cause, I’ll mention that I am a sad individual and I own an Endless Pool (albeit a very underutilised one (she shamefully admits)) which is in a room off our living room so it’s hardly a chore. You can tell how regularly I've used it by my waistline, my lack of fitness and the fact that I never switched the pool heating back on after our return from our summer holiday until after I started this blog on Thursday.

Well the water temperature reached a pleasant 28 degrees yesterday so I couldn’t put it off any longer and in an effort to swim off the effects of way too many Kir Royals and glasses of red wine last night, I took the plunge and was surprised to survive a 40 minute session of which 30 minutes was actual swimming time (well 29mins and 56 seconds but whose counting.) 
  
The session was pretty unimaginative and all front crawl, oh yeah and the odd 300m in the middle was because I lost count of my strokes.

 2 x 250 @ 4.30s
 1 X 300 @ 5.00s
 2 x 250 @ 4.30s
 6 x 100 @ 2.00 pull
Total      1900m

As you can imagine swimming in a flume the distances are a bit rough and ready, so I count my strokes and reckon that 100 strokes is 100 metres give or take, this is probably a bit of an underestimate as I usually take about 80 strokes per 100 in a 25m pool, but as there are no turns and push offs from the wall I reckon that adds about 20% as I usually manage to clear the flags before I breathe.

Secretly I have to confess there's something really satisfying and just a little bit smug about being able to swim on days and at times when usually you can't access a pool, but that still hasn't been sufficient motivation to persuade me to use the Endless Pool regularly. Maybe that will be another positive spin off from this blog....... as another flying pig is sighted in Deepest Darkest North West Durham

1 comment:

  1. Go Girl!! I'm liking that 'usually manage to clear the flags before breathing' thing. I like to to think I do , but sadly..... probably don't. Right theres my aim for the year.

    BTW someone sent me a fandabulous excel spread sheet thingy for setting your target metres for the year and entering everything you do and seeing the total come down. email me and I'll send it to you. Ruthie x

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