It was raining this morning. I didn't run. I can run in the rain. I will run in the rain. On weekends. But not during the week.
Since I got up early to run, though, I decided to do a long tae bo from the amped series that I haven't tried yet. My arms surely feel it. The amped series is great for the arms, where as all of the other tae bos are better for legs. I'm liking it because I can mix it all up and feel like I'm getting a total body workout across two days.
But the real news? The pool at the Gym. Wow. I'm so totally impressed with the pool environment itself that I'll just skip the part where I swam one lap and huffed and puffed at the wall for a few minutes to rave about the pool. The designated lap lane was open when we arrived at 6:15ish, and Preston and I were the only people using it for the 30 minutes we were there. There were a number of kids and families at the pool, but they totally stayed out of the lap lane. I couldn't believe it!! It's like I was transported into a world where people are totally polite and raising their kids to have manners!! Very impressed. I even heard one lady say (while I tried to get my HR down below 200), "No, let's not go over there right now, they're swimming laps." Awesome!!!
Yeah, so about those laps... ass-kickers. I did not expect how incredibly difficult that would be. I've been swimming all my life. I'm quite a decent swimmer. I'm even a bilateral breather. I'm in the best cardiovascular and muscular shape of my life (when trying, at least), so I kind of thought I'd hop in and swim some laps and get a good workout and go home. What actually happened was I hopped in, swam a lap and then panted for a long time while my heart beat out of control, and repeated. A lot. I swam two laps of breast stroke and then two of freestyle and repeated the combo 5 times. To be fair to myself, by about midway through I was breaking only after every two laps, and by the end I was using the breast stroke to "break" and trying to minimize my time on the wall. Still. I followed those twenty laps with 2 more of breast stroke, 1 of arms-only freestyle (ass-kicker), and 1 timed lap of freestyle (:36.98). I spent 30 minutes swimming, and if that timed lap was relatively accurate, that means that I spent approximately half of that time clutching the wall and panting. Nice.
But at least I have a baseline, and at least 2 (but hopefully 3) months more of the pool being open. I'd like to be swimming 30 minutes straight, and 50-60 laps in that time by the time the pool closes. Aiming at at least 3 swims per week.
P.S. I guess the pool is 25 something long. Meters or yards, how can I tell??
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