Jan 5, 2008

secret swimmy goal

i've had a secret swimmy goal in my head since i had 30 minute monday swims put on my schedule. i know how to swim, but i have never been a swimmer, so i wasn't quite sure what to do when presented with the officialness of swimming on my schedule. so i've just been getting in the pool and swimming. it was a nice change of pace from my usual routine of being a slave to my watch and my running pace. swim times had no meaning to me. i could just swim and not care how i did. but dammit, i like to measure things - to know how i am doing. and then one day i noticed the sign on the wall of the pool club that stated how many lengths equaled a mile. i didn't fully understand the lengths vs. laps. i had to ask the lifeguard to explain the difference between the two. i went home and plugged my lengths into a calculator, and then into my favorite workout log. and now i had a new goal. you know, in addition to that BQ. swim 1 mile in my allotted 30 minutes by the time this marathon training was over. and so i swam today and got out of the pool fairly elated, thinking i had done it. i swam a mile. but when i got home and plugged my lengths into my log, i realized i didn't. i was two lengths short. almost there.

5 comments:

house on hill road said...

a length is down the pool once - a lap there and back. right? wrong?

zanne said...

yes. that's right! i never really knew ...

Gotta Run..... said...

Girl I do believe you are far more nuts than me!!! thought we might could be sister but you are even more driven than me... but by just a little...LOL!!

Always good and smart to turn workouts into a goal focused task. Making the time fly and something to measure how far you have come.

MiaStella said...

Forever i thought that was a yard pool, only recently learned it was meter.
A mile in 30 minutes is a great goal!! Almost there! What happened...did you miscount and forget one?
I lost all my swim speed after three months off...trying to get back at it!

Unknown said...

So I want to know what triathlon you'll be signing up for this year :)

When I was training for my first tri I thought I had figured out how many lengths equaled a half mile (the length of the swim portion). I miscalculated, thinking it would take me about 35-40 minutes. Imagine my surprise when it took me half that amount! (I think I was figuring laps vs. lengths).