The last few days have been crazy. We have been slowly moving out of our apartment and into our new house. As I’ve said before, this has made many convenient excuses. Today almost turned into another one, but I finally broke down and swam a little today.

Last night we slept at the new house for the first time. It was a rough night. The new house has all new sounds that I’m not used to yet. Plus I ate way too much for dinner, which made me feel too hot for most the night. This led to not getting up early enough to swim before work.

We had professional movers pack up the rest of our stuff today at 1:00. Knowing this was on the schedule, I headed over to the apartment around noon to help pick up and get the last few things ready for the movers. By 12:45 there wasn’t much else I could do and I figured I would head back to work. This is when I had the breakthrough. I hadn’t showered in the morning and was feeling pretty gross, so I talked myself into swinging by the gym (I had my swim stuff in the car) and taking a shower. By the time I got to the gym I had convinced myself to at least get in the pool and swim a 500. By the time I was in the pool I knew I wasn’t going to leave without doing at least a partial workout. It felt really good to be in the pool again.

300 Free warm-up
5 x 100 Free @ 2:05 (coming in between 1:10 and 1:15)
200 Free easy
50 Free fast (0:30)
200 Free warm-down

After that last post, I decided to get some work done. Soon after starting to work, I realized that everything was broken. I decided I might as well swim a little. I went to the gym, got changed, went out to the pool, only to realize that my goggles were not in the swim bag. I must have left them in my regular workout bag, which was in my locker. Instead of going back to my locker to hunt down my goggles, I decided to borrow Charmaine’s goggles, which were in the swim bag.

My goggles are red. Charmaine’s goggles are green. It makes a difference. When I swim with Charmaine’s goggles, it seems fairly relaxing. When I swim with my goggles, I feel driven. I find this very interesting. How can the color of the lense make that much difference? And yet, it does.

500 Free warm-up
5 x 100 Free @ 2:05 (coming in between 1:10 and 1:15)
100 Free easy
6 x 50 Kick @ 1:20 (coming in at 0:55)
100 Free easy
50 Free fast (0:32)
100 Free fast (1:05)
100 Free warm-down

We had a big mandatory company meeting this morning. I wanted to be there a little early, so I decided I wouldn’t get up to swim in the morning. I didn’t sleep very well. There was a lot of rain and other random noises throughout the night. I kept waking up and wondering what time it was.

The meeting went well, but it spawned some other meetings that happened right after the first meeting. This led to my being in meetings until about 1:15. At that point nobody wanted to go lift weights, which was fine with me. I wanted to swim anyway and it worked out so that I could. I didn’t want to be away from work too long, which made a nice excuse for cutting the swim a bit short.

500 Free warm-up
5 x 200 Free @ 3:45 (coming in at 2:40)
100 Free easy
200 Free warm-down
———-
1800 yards

I want to start adding some weight training to my swim workouts. For a while I was only lifting and not swimming. After a few months I started swimming in the morning (weight lifting was at lunch). I haven’t done any weight training for 5 or 6 weeks now. I think it’s time to add it back in. It was that exact desire that forced me out of bed this morning.

It was really cold when I stepped outside. My car said it was 42 degrees. That’s pretty cold for this time of year. It took my car the whole way to the gym before the heater was very warm.

The usual group of aqua-cows was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the lights in the pool area were turned off. This isn’t something a non-employee can do, so I went back to the front desk to ask if the pool was closed. It was open. The only lights were the lights under water. It reminded me of morning swim practice in the outdoor pool at Cottonwood Heights in my high school days. Of course, I didn’t swim anything like I used to, but it was still fun.

500 Free warm-up
10 x 100 Free @ 2:15 (coming in around 1:15)
250 Free warm-down
———-
1750 yards (about 1 mile)

Saturday. My new goal for Saturdays is to swim at least 3000 yards. Saturdays are good days for a longer workout, because I get a day off before swimming again on Monday. I also want to do sets of longer distances on Saturdays. Today I wanted to do a set of 10 x 200 yards. I ran out of steam after 8, but I’m still pretty happy about it, since it was my first time doing any 200s.

500 Free warm-up
8 x 200 Free @ 3:45 (coming in between 2:35 and 2:40)
100 Free easy
4 x 100 Kick @ 2:30 (coming in at 2:00)
100 Free easy
200 Free
100 Free easy
———-
3000 yards

I did get up this morning and go swimming, but it was really hot. The pool area of Gold’s Gym isn’t exactly well ventilated, and it wasn’t a pleasant place to be after the aqua-cows finished their “workout.” I don’t know the exact temperature of the water, but it had to be over 85 degrees. It was horrible.

I didn’t swim well, but I swam. Charmaine came with me this morning, so I couldn’t just bail out. Once again, it’s great to have someone to push you harder.

500 Free warm-up
10 x 100 Free @ 2:05 (coming in between 1:15 and 1:20)
100 Free easy
6 x 50 Kick @ 1:20 (coming in at 1:00)
200 Free warm-down

Today I made sure to get Alex before heading to the pool.  He also made sure I got him before leaving.  It worked out pretty well.  As we walked in, we saw Jeff and Steve coming out of the locker room.  They have previously said that they do cardio on Wednesdays.  I asked them if they were going to swim.  They declined.  They are watching episodes of Firefly while they run on the treadmills.  I could never deny someone that experience.

The pool was empty when we got in, but halfway through our warm-up a lady got in the slow lane and started swimming.  She was pretty fast for a girl, but never swam more than a 50 without a taking a break.  She probably only swam 600 yards before getting out.

We decided to mix it up today.  We did some IM instead of the usual freestyle.  That turned out to be pretty fun, but it definitely gets my heartrate up faster than freestyle.  Maybe that means I need to find a way to push myself harder on freestyle?  I’ll have to experiment with that idea one of these days.  Alex kept up fairly well on the IM, but fell behind on kicking.  Kicking was last, so maybe that played into it as well, but I think Alex needs to work on his kick.

500 Free warm-up
5 x 100 IM @ 3:00 (coming in between 1:25 and 1:35)
100 Free easy
5 x 100 Kick @ 3:00 (working from easy to hard per 25, coming in at 2:00)
150 Free warm-down