New swimming regime

After my run on Saturday I was pretty sore on Sunday/Monday – my thigh muscles ached like there was no tomorrow. I’m still glad I went and I’ll still try to go again this weekend, but boy it hurt!

Still, no pain, no gain…

Was at the pool again on Monday for my usual Monday night swim. Decided on a new tactic for this year. Rather than swimming for a set amount of time I am going to swim a set number of lengths, regardless of how long it takes me. Then I can work on trying to get a bit quicker, trying to beat my time for that number of lengths and then up the number of lengths as the weeks go on, thus helping me get fitter!

As I normally swim about 34 lengths or so in half an hour I decided to start off at a relatively gentle 40 lengths target. The pool is the average 25 yards that local pools seem to be (around 23 metres) so that would be a nice half a mile (or around 914 metres according to an online calculator I've just found...)

I had bought myself a new gizmo last week to help me count lengths and time myself and I must say it worked a treat (as did my new approach). Gone was the constant craning up at the clock as I watched the minutes tick past. Instead I could concentrate on counting my lengths and let the gizmo time me (and keep a track on my counting!).


It's called a Sportcount and it's pretty good as it just sits on your index finger and you can press the button with your thumb when you turn and it provides lap count and split times during your workout, and reports summary statistics at the end of the session.

I like to count the lengths in my head as well as it’s a way of using the swimming as mental relaxation as well as physical exercise. It clears my brain of whatever else might be clogging it up. As I was going for a nice round set number of lengths I could neatly count them in sets of 10, which I found to be a great psychological boost – it meant I didn’t have to concentrate on the large number left til the end, but on how many I had to do in this set – 10 is a much better number to aim at than 40!

By the end of my 40 lengths I could happily have done another 10 at least, which was both surprising and made me feel good. I might even have done so if I hadn’t been wanting to start off modestly (just because I had the energy for it this week, doesn’t mean I will next!), and if I hadn’t arranged for the Fiancé to meet me at a specific time.

The gizmo gives me some lovely stats, so here are last nights:

40 lengths
33.07.75 minutes
Average time for a length: 49.69 seconds (pretty slow, I know)
Fastest length: 1 at 40.25 seconds
Slowest length: 16 at 53.43 seconds

Not quite sure why 16 was my slowest, but interesting that it was one in the middle, not one at the end. It might have been one where I got stuck behind a slow person – the real bane of public swimming (particularly in January when every one has resolutions to break).

Pretty pleased with all that, particularly the overall time, which I thought was going to be slower for the 40 lengths. So next time my challenge is to try and make them a bit faster. Let’s see how I do…