splish splash

Total Distance So Far: 193.8 miles

Alright alright... I'm not sure the total mileage meter is completely accurate with the latest mileage addition. See, I'm back home again finally, and tonight since my foot is aching quite a bit I opted to go lap swimming with Val in place of running fast around a track. It was one of the low-to-no-impact alternatives Coach Joe suggested to me to get my heart rate up.

When I suggested to Val that I didn't think I should run tonight due to a particularly unhappy foot, she eagerly suggested we try swimming. She even knew where we could find a public pool that was open afterwork! I was up for it.

I met her at her house, and we carpooled over to the Columbia Pool. It was something like $6.25/person to get in. They had 3 lanes setup for lap swimming in the center of the pool. I took a quick tentative lap to see how it "felt" in comparison to our laps on the track. Surprisingly, one lap in the pool seemed to be the same exertion for me as one lap around the track. I shared this with Val and suggested we do 4 laps (i.e. a 200 meter swim) in place of the 10 minute warm-up, and then since the training tonight was 5x 800's on the track (800 = 2 laps around the track) we would replace that with 5x 100's in the pool (surprisingly also 2 laps), then another 200m cool-down. Also, to make the warm-up and cool-down more approachable, I suggested we use kickboards.

So that's what I did for my training tonight. I switched out between breast stroke and crawl stroke, and even threw in a 50m of backstroke for variety. It was a nice change of venue, and man did my arms get tired from crawl stroke! I guess I don't use my arms much when I run. Go figure! hehehe.

Anyway, I think this is a great option for me to get my heart rate up and not put stress on my feet. I might continue to do lap swimming on Mondays.