14 December 2009

The Dirty Dozen

More than a few real swimmers read this blog and either remember their early days learning to swim or laugh at my pathetic attempts. Either way, I think I'm providing a service. And this weekend I hit another incredible milestone worthy of equal parts admiration and ridicule. I swam 1200 yards (known in swimming circles as a Dirty Dozen {well, not really, I just made that up}).

But, yeah, I swam 1200 yards and was darned proud of myself. It turns out on weekends, I'm not constrained by that annoying "have to get to work" factor. I can swim a couple of extra laps if I'm up to it. And it turns out that yards 1001 to 1200 are no harder than yards 801 to 1000. I just need a few more minutes to do them and a bit of motivation.

The minutes were easy but the motivation was tricky this weekend. After swimming my 1000 yards, I went over to the diving well to work on flip turns (I'm scared to do them in 3 feet of water since I tend to go off the wall STRAIGHT DOWN). I tried one, got a bunch of water up my nose, and ended up in the middle of the pool with no clue how I got there. Actually, it reminded me a lot of my college days. But I realized that I shouldn't be doing this without adult supervision and went back to the lanes with the intention of getting out of the pool.

Once I was in the lane, I thought, "8 laps isn't that many....especially if I do 4 at a time." And, before I could think better of it, I pulled my goggles back down and pushed off the wall. Next thing I knew, I'd finished my first Dirty Dozen.

1 comment:

  1. Hello! I'm a competive swimmer and even though you might have thought that we would be laughing at your attempts, I think that's great. Swimming is such a fun and healthy thing to do even if you are not a competive swimmer. I love your blog it is really funny, glad I ran into it! P.S... I usually have over 6 grand at practice 6 days a week... :)

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