Too Fast For The Slow Lane, Too Slow For The Medium Lane

I meant to blog last night but swimming just 1km (40 lengths) really took it out of me and I was too tired to even type the words so took myself to bed with a DVD on the laptop at 8.30pm.

 

I’m not sure why just 40 lengths felt so hard last night when 64 is my norm – I probably could have pushed myself to the full mile but every stroke just felt like too much hard work!  Maybe because I swam in the medium lane and tried to keep up with some of the faster swimmers in there.  You see, I am now too fast for the slow lane, and conscious that I don’t want to make any of the other swimmers feel uncomfortable by catching them up and overtaking them all the time, but I’m that little bit too slow for the medium lane and end up being that person that everyone wants to get past.  I am quite considerate of my fellow medium lane swimmers and if the person behind me is clearly a faster swimmer I will wait at the end of the lane so that they can go in front of me as I don’t want to hold them up – if only the sloooooow people were as considerate in the slow late.  I think they need to create a new lane… I tried to Google for a word that would represent this lane in between slow and medium but I just got results about when to switch from slow to medium flow nipples on babies bottles, something I have no desire nor need to know, so let’s just call this the Kelly lane!

 

On the plus side – I am now 76% of the way through my January target of 10km.  So far I swum 7550m and spent 4 hours and 45 minutes in the pool – that’s an average swimming speed of 1.58km per hour, far off the speed of the fastest breaststrokers who, according to our friends on Wikipedia, can swim about 1.57 metres per second (5.65km per hour) but not bad for someone who couldn’t really manage a couple of widths a few months ago!  I am swimming twice more this week, my usual Wednesday slot then again on Thursday – I usually horse ride on Thursdays but have been asked to stay late and do a presentation to a Customer at work so won’t make it home in time for riding, but should get chance for a quick swim.  With this in mind, and only 2450m left to reach the 10km target, I think I might just do it this week with 1 week to spare – next week’s swims will just be bonuses!  Maybe I need to set a more challenging February target?!