So the master plan of a run in the am and swim in the pm didn’t exactly happen today.  Because of my horrible sunburn from my ride yesterday, I slept terribly last night and when the alarm clock went off at 5:30a, I promptly turned it off and rolled over for another hour or so of sleep.

After a usual Monday of work, I headed home to choose between the run or swim because if I did both, I would be done at 8p which means that I’d eat dinner late and inevitably stay up later than I wanted to and have a repeat of this morning when my alarm clock goes off tomorrow.  So I decided that the swim wins as I can squeeze in a run another day this week and swimming is the area I need to focus on because I’m really good at making excuses for not making it to the pool 🙂

The first 1600 meters were pretty uneventful other than goggle issues.  How after all of the years of swimming as a child and even swimming last year that I still have trouble either making the straps so tight that I get a headache or too loose that water leaks is beyond me.  Perhaps I’m buying the wrong brand/style?  I thought the pair I got at REI looked decent and were on the pricier side of the ones they had in stock, but maybe not.  Grr.

Anyways, after the 1600 meters things got dicey in the pool.  At the magic hour of 6:30 everyone and their mother decided they wanted to swim laps too.  But we aren’t talking general casual lap swimmers I’m used to, this was quite the hodgepodge of people.  I usually don’t swim at this time of day on Mondays for this reason, but I thought I had arrived at the pool early enough to avoid this busy swim time.

Back to the group of swimmers…. so there were two lanes available, one regular sized lane and one larger one that could fit three people swimming in their one section comfortably.  The lane that I started in, the larger one, soon became the target for all of the stragglers to join as the other lane had two super hardcore men swimming laps 3 million times faster than me (I define hardcore as the difference between swimming laps in swim trunks or swimming them in jammers.  And extra points for bringing a water bottle and a laminated copy of your planned swim workout.), in fact I think they lapped me three times in one of my single laps during my swim.  So I will introduce you to the both-arms-back-at-the-same-time-backstroker, the one-legged-kick-breaststroker and furry man.  Furry man was just slow but he was also furry so it stuck out in my mind, I’m sure he’s the culprit for the hair clumps in the pool that I’m so deathly afraid of (more on that in another post).   Aside from the new characters I’ve never encountered in the pool before, I’ve never done a circle swim before either.  It was so so so very awkward considering that everyone swimming, except one other guy and I, had completely different paces.  I survived the remainder of my swim avoiding fur, swimming around the backstroker and dodging the one-legged kicks (it was the worst breast stroke kick I’ve ever seen).  Note to self, do NOT attempt long swims at the Y on Monday evenings.

Time for bed!