Wannabe

I went to the pool for the first time in two months on Monday night and it was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it! The Michael Phelps affect was in full force. Most notable were the four twenty-somethings taking up the two lanes next to the one I was sharing with a coworker who also does triathlons. First of all, they stood at the end of the lanes for extended periods of time. Not swimming, mind you, but talking. Then, every so often, they would SWIM SWIM SWIM as hard as they could to the other end of the pool and back. This involved massive amounts of splash and waves, which carried over into my lane and made breathing interesting, to say the least. Then they would stand again. One of them appeared to be the “coach,” and he would say things like “let’s do 75s, freestyle down, then underwater back, then kicking.” Which hey, is a perfectly fine plan, I guess.
I can’t blame them — I want to be Michael Phelps too. But it was funny.
Not funny was my pathetic self dragging my body up and down the pool for 1500 yards, which is 1200 yards farther than I swam on Sunday at the race. And I already mentioned I hadn’t been in the pool for two months before that. I always think I can let my swimming slide since it’s the one of the three tri sports that comes somewhat naturally to me. And I am always reminded that thinking that way is stupid. I cannot let swimming slide, unless I want to find myself feeling really wussy in the water.
And I do not want that.
Anyway, the workout took 33 minutes, with 31 minutes of actual swimming time since I took a 1-minute breather between each set of 500 yards. That time is not too shabby, even compared to what I normally do. But it usually feels a lot easier than it did yesterday.
In other news, the Olympics are ruining my life, primarily because it is impossible to go to bed before at least 11:00. And then I get to puttering around before going to bed when the local news come on, but by the time I’m ready to lie down, the late night Olympics programming has started up again and I just have to watch for 5 more minutes. Or 15. Or a half hour.
I do love the Olympics.