If you're a fan of this dumb blog, and obviously, you ARE...you'll remember that I once lived in Costa Rica and had a pool in my backyard and it was super hot weather every day and the only respite from the heat was a daily swim in that pool and along with that story came a story about how I'm really bad at judging distance in meters and thus I thought I had been swimming a mile every day when really I wasn't.
You'll also remember I'm a sucker for punishment and have done a couple of triathlons in my recent past. This year, I decided I hadn't been punished enough and signed up for the International Distance, which is like forever longer than the Sprint Distances of yesteryear and now I'm stuck trying to train for it. Well, I got nothin' else goin'.
The International Distance carries an almost 1 mile swim.
I went to my gym today...*
*This was embarrassing: I was about to leave when two gym-rat dudes from my man-filled office were leaving to go to the gym, I presumed together. I asked if I could ride with them, but then realized after it was too late that they were driving separately. So I ended up riding to the gym with just one of them. Alone. Honestly the gym is so close we could walk but it's just a little bit too cold out still...
...with the goal of swimming maybe 400 meters which means I-don't-know-what in miles. But it's 16 lengths of a 25-meter pool. I set my goal pretty low because it would be my first time in the pool in a while. Well, I did that in 10 minutes. It's not that big a deal. It's just four lengths each of the crawl, the breast stroke, then the backstroke and then the sidestroke. So, I kept going. I thought maybe I could make 800 meters. And it took me a while, but I got that done too. Then I thought: (and what is there to do while swimming besides think? And count? And do math? And predict lengths? And convert meters to miles? And be embarrassed that I didn't just drive my own car?) I should just do a half-mile. "Well", I thought, "2.2 kilometers is a mile, and so 2200 meters is a mile. If I do 1100 meters, that's a half-mile".
And so I did. And it took me 40 minutes. This made me nervous, because during the triathlon I need to swim almost a mile and 40 minutes for a half-mile means an hour.twenty for a mile. Oh well, I'd work on my time later.
But I was excited to have completed a half-mile! My first time back in the pool! It made me feel like I wouldn't be so bad off in July for this dumb triathlon. Then I sat in the hot-tub for five minutes and then showered and...*
*This was embarrassing: I realized I had agreed to meet the dude from my office out front at a certain time for my ride back but I forgot to budget time for the shower after swimming and getting ready and of course was running late and there was no time for makeup or drying my hair and so I met him with goggle-eyes and wet hair.
...after I got back to the office I converted 1100 meters to miles. It was actually .68. In other words, I almost swam three-quarters of a mile today! My first time in the water in a million years. PSH! International Distance. Whatevs. I got this.
And for your information:
2.2 kilometers is NOT a mile.
2.2 pounds is a kilogram.
DUH.
1.6 kilometers is a mile.
DUH.
 |
| Yes I wore the nose pincher. |
No comments:
Post a Comment