You're Too Fast

Today I drove the running route I took yesterday in order to figure out the distance. Turns out it was 3.6 miles, which was actually longer than I would have thought, especially since I ended up doing quite a bit of walking. It averaged out to be a 10:47 mile pace, while that's not great I'm still okay with it.

I didn't end up swimming until this afternoon. The weather was sort-of on and off all day long and we got rained on while we were out on our family picnic and excursion to the Lumberman's Monument and the Foote Dam. Luckily, there was a picnic pavilion at the Monument, so at least we were able to be dry while we ate. When we got back to the cottage it cleared up for a while and I decided that it was pretty much then or never for a swim.

I got all my gear on and headed out. My mom came along and took some photos of me swimming. Some of them have turned out really well and when I'm back in civilization again, I'll try to post some of them.

My plan for today was just to practice getting into and out of the water. The beach here is really nice and sandy and you have to go out quite a ways to not be able to touch the bottom of the lake. My brother and some of his friends found a rope anchored down in the sand and tied an old jug to it, so I just swam straight out to the jug and came back into shore.

It was nothing exciting and each time I got out of the water I would wait for a minute and talk myself into going back again. After the first couple of times I had gone out, my mom said that I was "too fast" for the camera and some of the shots she was getting were a bit blurry, so she decided to try to take a movie with her camera.

I went out again and she took a movie. When I got out, she made me watch it with her. I'm quite glad I did because her idea of a good swimming movie and my idea of a good swimming movie are nothing alike. Her idea was to get a close up of my face, which makes for good viewing. My idea was to see if I was swimming in a straight line or not and for that you need a bit more perspective. So, she made a second movie.

I will say that I sort-of lost track of how many times I went out there and back. I did walk out to the jug when I was done and found out that it was 134 feet* one way / 268 feet there and back = 0.05 miles each time. I was out there for 45 minutes and each trip there and back was about 2 minutes. Of course, I didn't use a stop watch or a HR monitor, so I don't have a lot of data, but I do feel like I accomplished what I wanted to today and got a lot of good practice in. And the video showed that I swam mostly in a straight line, even with the waves, so I must be doing an okay job sighting. All good news.

*To clarify, 134 feet = 134 small Amy steps. It's not an exact measurement.