awww yeah

The alma mater's new pool opened today, so in I went. Nice locker room, pretty pool (with lots of natural light from large windows up high - I could see the partly cloudy skies every so often), cold water (hurray!), what a deal.

The pool is 30 meters long and has a moveable bulkhead that cordons off a 25-yard portion and leaves a smaller pool for people who like that sort of thing to swim crosswise in. I grabbed a lane and dusted off the nearly two-week layoff with no problem. I figured what the hell and did 2,900 yards. Easy breezy, and I'm not too congested yet, either.

The lunch hour swim (which I was in for) is an hour and a half, so I guess the time restriction makes my old 2 mph goal a little unnecessary. I figure 3,600 yards is what I'll shoot for, and maybe that will wind up being doable in 6o minutes...

Anyway, a farewell to decongestants would be a huge plus, as would dumping the $36.50 or whatever the Y requires each month. Money's not that plentiful, for christ's sake.

perched at the edge

of insanity, recuperation and the pool, too. The alma mater claims it opens its old pool Tuesday, the same day as a planned open house at the new pool. Well, we'll see.

My shoulder feels better and I'm antsy to get back in the water. A week-plus is too long, damn it.

antsy for a swim

Here I sit, still on the shelf while the pool people get organized and my shoulder heals.

The time off has made a big dent in my ice cream consumption but has probably been a good thing for my injury, for which I am sure I was overdue.

Looking back on my past athletic escapades, I see a long pattern of wear-and-tear problems, and I haven't taken this much time off since I started swimming last September.

Gee, 1 plus 1 equals 2.

Well, here's to hoping that my return to aqualand (currently set for Tuesday at the alma mater's old pool) goes swimmingly.

On the shelf

But not entirely by choice: Not only is the usual pool closed for maintenance, the backup (alma mater) pool is closed until Aug. 29, and the school's new pool isn't open yet. Curses!

On the flip side (har-de-har), that does mean a week of enforced rest, which I am sure my shoulder could use.

so much for that

Well, Thursday was back to 2,400 meters, mostly because my shoulder told me to call it a day at that point.

As usual, I had trouble keeping count, so I think I went farther than my official tally. When I lose count, or think I do - this happens four or five times a workout, at least - I just go back to the last count I remember. I think this means I typically add a couple laps to each workout, but I really don't have a good handle on the situation. I know I'm swimming at least what I report, and probably farther most days.

I need some way to count laps that will work. I seem to recall reading about goggles that have a heads-up display that keeps track, but that seems silly (and probably expensive). I guess I'll get one of those around the same time I decide to have music piped in through my bones via an mp3 player attached to my head. Which is to say, never.

Although my workday is music-free on account of being in a newsroom (and they all seem to be music-free), I just can't get that excited about listening to anything while I work out. Like my friend and colleague once said of people who jog while wearing a Walkman, "Are they that fucking afraid to be alone with themselves?"

Back to 2,600

The massage lady said to take it easy (so did the butterfly lady, for that matter), and I have been.

But without pushing, and with time to spare at the end, I was able to return to 2,600 meters Wednesday. I think with a little push, I could get to 2,800 pretty easily, but that's out until ML has me back in one piece.

How my schemes will be affected by the impending, inevitable move to a different pool, at least in the short run, remains to be seen. Because more time is allowed at the alma mater's old pool, and may be at its new pool, too, I'll have to decide whether to stick with an hour and try to pick up the speed just by hustle or maybe stretch out the distance to build up strength.

I probably need a coach.

change in the offing

Monday's swim was nothing out of the ordinary, although there were many, many other swimmers on hand. So I just took my usual spot between Gary and Varsity (and her circle-swimming pal) and watched most everybody whiz on by.

As expected, the pool authorities left a note announcing the annual maintenance will be from Aug. 19-Sept. 5. Drat.

But that is a good reason to check with the alma mater and see how they plan to deal with alumni who want to use their fancy new pool, which almost certainly would be cooler and less chemical-ly. I would like very much to ditch the decongestants, and being as I didn't need them in the college's old pool, I'm optimistic the new one would be OK, too.

So, we'll see.

Massage Lady 1, Shoulder 0

Taking the advice of the massage lady, who worked on me this afternoon, I took it (comparatively) easy in the pool today. She was right: The massage loosened up my shoulders enough to tempt me to try to fly, but I'm no fool (OK, at least not in this way), so I just put in a smooth 1.5-miler.

I'm officially revising my yardage goal, based in part on how I felt before and after her work and before and after the swim. I'm thinking now that if I can get to two miles in an hour by the second anniversary of the swimming project (that date is Sept. 6), I'll be satisfied. Seeing as how I'm not really all that far off right now, maybe that's a reachable target.

Besides, I always like to hit the mark early :)

defective self, defective swim

Monday's swim was nothing to write home about (nor, I suppose to write here until today), so I took Tuesday off and will do the same today. Speed wasn't a problem, but I felt out of synch and wore out early.

I pin my hopes on massage lady to help get things sorted out...

Clarinex & Clarinex-D

Maybe it is too early to tell for sure, because I've only taken these prescription versions of Claritin a couple of times.

Clarinex - OK, but nothing fabulous. I stay congested, but not too much.

Clarinex-D - Not great. Too aggressive at first, then too little oomph later on. Plus, I tend to wake up from it strung out, dehydrated. Ugh.

For the long haul, Clarinex (or maybe its OTC counterpart) is looking like a good possibility. Whatever else is true, I drink water like mad.

Saturday morning swim

An advantage of the local pool on Saturday is longer hours, a two-hour block. Previously, I would use the time to take a long swim, but I stuck with a mile-and-a-half today, which was no big deal.

When I arrived, the pool was empty, and only a few other swimmers stopped in, perhaps because of the ongoing Peach Basket Classic, a three-on-three street basketball tournament that is played annually here. The pool operator's have a big hand in the tourney, so maybe that helps explain the largely vacant facility.

Whatever. I don't mind swimming alone, and even when there're plenty of others in the pool, I'm not really swimming with them.

Just another easygoing Saturday in the summer...

Day 2 of the revision

and I'm wondering why I didn't figure it out earlier. I still took it easier than before, but I had time to spare yet again, so it looks as though adding yardage after the massage lady has intervened is probably a go.

thank goodness.

minor breakthrough

or maybe more:

So I've been rasslin' with this shoulder problem for quite some time, and have had to take days off I wouldn't have otherwise, ease up on weaving on days I wouldn't have otherwise, you get the picture.

In trying to come up with my own solutions, I fiddled with my stroke, in particular what I do when I breathe. For some reason known only to Poseidon, I took up kind of looking over my shoulder when I breathed in. This did indeed work, at least as far as making the twinge in my left arm go away.

Jolly good, says I. But today, while I was breezing through a routine but semi-out-of-synch warmup (maybe I'm feeling that summertime out-of-whack thing, too), I thinks to meself "Arrr. There's no way that over-the-shoulder thing is a good idea. If I'm supposed to be parallel to the bottom of the pool (a place I should probably refer to as Davy Jones's Locker :), I shouldn't have my head coming up out of the water to look back."

OK, so that's not verbatim.

But I took a crack at simply looking up at the ceiling and presto! less water in my mouth, easier breathing, better hydrodynamic profile and - duh - higher speed with lower effort. That can't be good for burning calories, of course, but it sure makes the swim more fun.

Now I harbor this hope that when the massage lady can fit me in and I can get back to having a loose back/shoulder/arm system, I can use this improvement in the stroke to pick up the pace a little.

I do, after all, have promises to keep, and miles to go.