Swimming before the kids appear

Date	Place of exercise	Duration	Swim Sprint	Start time
6 Nov	Kashirski Rodnichki	25 min	54.08 sec	15:13
7 Nov	Kashirski Rodnichki	23 min	48.50 sec	15:09
8 Nov	Kashirski Rodnichki	22 min	47.72 sec	08:02

          These swims were at a health sanatorium located about 100 km south of Moscow.  The ‘Swim Sprint’ was down and back, the length of the pool.  I’m not sure of the distance, but it seemed to be nearly that same as the Ridge pool and other. 

At any rate, 60 seconds was a good time, I decided.  The first day, I was a bit lethargic in my approach to the swims. I timed myself at a couple of the laps and achieved 1:03 and 1:02. These times are approximate, because without my glasses, and in the dim light of the pool, I could only make an approximate guess. 

          I was about to leave the pool on the first day when I decided that I should try to make it in under one minute.  I pumped and pumped and succeeded! My mood improved and all was well.

          The next day, I went down and I was a bit more systematic. I swam 5 laps, that’s down and back, performing a standard back stroke on the way down and a standard crawl on the way back.  Then I got out, found a somewhat dry spot and did 6 8 pushups and a few stretches reminiscent of yoga.  I got back in the pool and began a sprint.  I put ALL my energy into it.  As a matter of fact, I was concentrating on the stroke so much and I forgot to breathe for about 4 strokes. For the rest of the sprint, I breathed irregularly, but satisfactorily.  I did this sprint about 5 seconds quicker than the day before.

          Finally, on the last day at the camp, I swam in the morning.  I hadn’t been swimming in the morning because the campers were down there doing some kind of water exercises. Since there are about 130 campers altogether, even if only some fraction of them go to the pool, as opposed to other morning exercises (running, aerobics), there still might be a good number.  The last day, Sunday, I went down early, before the campers came, and did my swimming.

          I did the same strategy of 5 laps, get out for exercises, and then back in for an all-out sprint. I took more than half a second off my time from the day before.  You all might be thinking that half a second is nothing big, but as I’ve said before in this blog, when you are at the top of your game, a half a second can seem like a lifetime.