I dragged myself off the

I dragged myself off the couch last night to go swimming with Buzz and Jen. The heater in my apartment complex's lap pool has been broken for more than a month now, and despite all the recent sunny weather, the water was chilly. Jen and I got in slowly, and with the water at my waist I finally took the final plunge.

For some reason, swimming was tough last night. In my first few laps, I found myself gasping for air. I think it was because I was swimming feverishly in an attempt to warm up in the cold water, but it was different nonetheless. My breathing calmed down after a while, but overall my time in the pool was much harder than normal. I'm going to chalk it up to just being tired.

I was only going to do 20 laps but Buzz and Jen were still swimming when I finished my 20, so I just kept going until they were done. I ended up doing 27 laps (32 laps is ~1 mile). Not too bad.

(For reference, I count one lap as down and back, a complete "circuit" of the pool. Just going to the other end is a length.)

I have two different "patterns" I use while swimming. The first is to swim in sets of 6 laps/12 lengths: 5 lengths of freestyle, 1 length of breaststroke, 4 lengths of freestyle, 2 lengths of breaststroke. I rest for a minute or two at the end of each set, then do another. The second pattern is sets of 10 laps/20 lengths: 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 length of freestyle, each followed by 1 length of breaststroke.

I did the second pattern last night (I just stopped the third set early); I tend to follow the second pattern on nights when I'm tired, since it offers more breaststroking lengths and breaststroke is something I could do for hours. To make up for the ease factor of additional breaststroke lengths, I try to swim progressively faster as the number of freestyle lengths decreases.

Oh -- the other thing to mention is that the lap pool is so far over-chemicalled (is that a word?) that it's not even funny. After getting out of the pool, my lips and tongue burned, and I can still smell chlorine a bit in my hair today after three shampoos.