After work, I thought that I would spread my wings a bit and try a longer swim. I have recently been inspired by this Rob D fellow after reading about his swimming routines in the ocean near San Luis Obispo. I say San Luis Obispo because I go there to visit my daughter at college, and that is how I heard about Rob when he was doing his 10K New Years Swim.
So, it's nice to read about a person pushing the limits, and since I swim in the ocean, his story struck a chord within me. I decided that it was time to step it up a bit in my routine and increase my swim distance and speed. I use the term "speed" quite loosely and inappropriately, since I am a very bulky, heavy, slow swimmer.
So Rob motivated me to swim without my treasured Churchill fins. So far it has been a good experience. I have been out three times sans fins, and each swim was fine. I still am using my webbed gloves, though. I'm a step-by-step kind of guy.
I started at Oceanside Harbor and swam south to the Pier. I made it comfortably, albeit much slower than a "real" swimmer. Then I jogged back up to my car. The water was about 59 or 60, smooth, beautiful, with a breathtaking sunset. Typical weather again. Wow! Aren't we glad that we live here.
While swimming I was trying to concentrate on my arm stroke-the catch and pull, the angle of the elbows, keeping the elbows high, and keeping my stroke smooth. I did ok. Driving home I could feel that I had worked my triceps.
I need to try to figure out how Rob D puts that BING map on his blog posts that shows his swim routes and distances. Bit-by-bit.
I'm glad I've had a little bit of an impact on your swimming!
ReplyDeleteThose maps I post are generated by a GPS unit I keep inside my cap. It's a Garmin Forerunner 310xt and it tracks time/distance and stuff like that. It's made to be a watch but it you want it to work while swimming it has to stay in your cap to keep from constantly losing the signal.
The other thing you can do to approximate swim distances is while signed into your google account go to http://maps.google.com/ and up at the top look for a red link that says "New!" Click that and enable the distance measurement tool. You'll now have a little ruler icon in the bottom left corner of the map. Whenever you click it you'll be able to draw a route on the map and it will calculate the distance for you, it's super helpful to me and I use it a lot while day dreaming about places to swim :) I might have to do a "how to" post on that so everyone else can learn how to use that cool little feature...