WTF... SNOW?!?!?

I dragged myself outta bed at a normal hour this morning hoping to get to the pool by when it opened at 9am. HOWEVER, I looked out my window and saw heavy rain/sleet. Craaaaap. That meant an enjoyable scooter ride would be replaced with a long-ass bus ride. On the scooter, I can get there in about 10 minutes. On the bus, it takes closer to 45 minutes.

When I did FINALLY make it to the pool, this is how it looked outside.

Gross, but better than the "Michigan Alternative."

I ended up getting inside around 10am. THE POOL WAS PACKED. I mean, PACKED. There were literally no less than 8 people in each lane (except for the fat-lady/old-man lane on the far right... only about 3 in that one). I jumped in and just got in line.

This was taken on my way out. 

Notice how un-crowded the pool is now.

I wasn't doing any intervals or any other time-specific drills, so I had no problem going slightly slower/faster than usual. My plan was to do a 3000+ meter swim (a personal distance record) in an attempt to start raising my distances another notch.

The first 1700m were TOUGH. In addition to the pool being crowded, I just didn't feel like I could get into a rhythm. I made a point not to time myself so that I didn't start trying to shoot for any specific time, or make-up for a slower lap with an especially faster one. Although if I had to guess, I'd say I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:00min/100m.

The rest of the swim was gravy. The lanes starting to clear out and I quickly fell into rhythm. One of my small motivational tools are to measure my progress against other swimmers in my lane. For instance, if you and I cross paths in front of the lifeguard's chair going opposite directions, then my goal for the next lap would be to get to the lifeguard's chair first. It's lame, I know, and the other person has NO IDEA I'm racing them. Buuuuuuuut, I know - and I'll take any motivation I can get.

Around the 3000m mark I started feeling sluggish. I was secretly plotting against myself, though and had long-ago decided that if I made it to 3000m without any drastic problems, then I was going to go for 3300m. Heh, and at that point I began plotting secretly against myself even more and decided at 3200m that I was going to take it to 3500m!

So I swam 3500m! That's the longest swim of my life by a factor of 800m!! Wohoo!! I felt tired, but great at the same time. My lower back was a bit sore, but I quickly remedied that my marinating in the hot-tub. While soaking, I looked out the window and saw the following...

Ahh!! What is that white crap?!?

Grrrreat - it was snowing.  At this point I was incredibly happy that I had decided not to take the scooter through the rain/sleet because it would be 100% unrideable in this mess.

Nasty!

In any event, I'm proud of the new distance-record set (3500m) and my subsequent weekly record (8900m). I'm now planning on raising the baseline distances for my regular weekly workouts (currently 2700m) to around 3000m and then trying to squeeze off a nice, longer-distance, continuous distance swim on a weekend morning.

 

I'm now looking forward to laying back on the couch and enjoying a great day of college football!