3k Swim.

Sunday I decided that I would again attempt a longer swim. I have been swimming regularly, just neglecting the long swims, long being a mile or more. My longest swim to date, other than during masters swimming practice, had been 2500 yards for 59 min. back in September. I figured I would do that again. Then I started calculating laps, after doing the fast 20 lap swim the other day. 20 laps is 1000 yards. 2500 yards would be 55 laps. Hmm. Might was well round that off to 60 for 3000 yards. Yikes.

Breaking it down into 10 lap increments (500 yards) makes it go so much easier. 10 laps, stop and get a drink, start again. It was a way too to gauge my time to be sure I am staying on pace. I started at a comfortable pace and held it most of the way.

The pool was crowded--every lane but one had 2 people in it. I thought of joining that person, who was lost in his own world it appeared since he was practicing a stroke out of the water. Just about the time I decided to hop in and share the lane, he took off swimming a WILD breaststroke, taking up the entire lane with his kick and stroke. Forget that. I decided to go to the open lanes and fit in there.

Now you would think with only 2 people in the open lanes (3 combined into one big one) that we would not have a problem. My only choice was the middle so I wanted to stay clear of both of the people on the ends. Somehow they both managed to drift over into my space. Sheesh. Then another guy decides to join us, to do his water jog (hop if you ask me). So he's hopping between the 3 lanes and sure enough stops dead in my lane. I saw him stop and decided to deliberately swim into him so he would have to move hopefully. Yes he did and he got out in fact.

Finally I had the whole 3 lanes to myself and the pool otherwise was emptying as well. I'm into my third set of 10 laps when wham! There's a kid in my lane swimming right into me. I was startled and stopped and said "where in the hell did you come from??" I look around and there's NO ONE in 5 lanes of the pool, but yet this giggling kid is running into me?? So I just said, get out of my lane and use another one. Sheesh! I don't know whether it was intentional or an oversight that she decided to just hop in but it was irritating. I get bothered by these types of things when maybe someone else wouldn't, but to me it is a logic thing--if there is no one else in the pool, why would you pick my lane??

Okay, not to get distracted, I continued on for up to 40 laps before I realized I was in the pool all alone. Each 10 laps my time was staying pretty much on pace. I felt it was a good pace, but by the time I hit 50 and I started doing that calculating thing, I started getting a little disappointed. I realized even by doing 60 laps, which I did in 1:05, I started thinking of an IM swim distance, and needing another 18 laps to get the 2.4 miles. That would probably take me at least another 20 min. I never figured it out like that, but figured I might be faster. Glad the reality set in now.

60 laps, 3000 yards, one hour 5 minutes, nine seconds. I was happy I finally reached this distance. I was even happy with my time, but know if I want to progress to 2.4 miles I would like to be a little faster. Distractions aside, it definitely won't be this easy in an open water swim with most likely at least 500 people around me. Maybe a wetsuit will help some, but I still have some work to do.