So it’s been a year of swimming regularly. I started thinking about it as something to do to augment my regular exercise and after a year I’ve found that swimming has not only taken over but I just sent in a registration form to compete in an honest-to-God swim meet. And not some little fuck-around meet, either. A big one. With blocks and timing pads and everything! It’s kind of a big deal.

As I was sealing up the envelope with my registration form inside I started asking myself how I got here. What changed? And what had I actually accomplished along the way. I’m not sure what exactly changed, other than enjoying it. It was fairly simple to alter the workout routine to substitute swimming for my typical cardio work. As I re-familiarized myself with the pool, I did it more and more, and the elliptical less and less. I started off swimming 1000 yards on my lunch hour, two or three times a week. Now I’m swimming five days a week, three days on my own and twice a week with a USMS team. I’m averaging 14000 yards a week– about five times what I started doing.

So there’s that. What’s more I started keeping track of things as the year progressed. I mean, it’s swimming. You go up the lane, you flip around and you come back down the lane. Up and back, up and back, up and back. It’s not the most exciting of exercises.

For several months I swam the same workout each time. I started with five 200 Free on whatever it took to do them. When I completed five of them, I congratulated myself, got out of the pool and walked around feeling virtuous the rest of the day. As I got stronger, my times dropped and I could complete the workout in less time. Eventually I added a sixth 200 Free, but by that time I was pretty bored.

So I watched the clock. I started playing games with myself. Can I do this 50 in less than a minute? Can I string a set of three 200 Free on the 4:00 together without completely gasping out? Can I catch that guy swimming a lane over? I think it was that last one that did it. Having those little imaginary races in my head with other people in the pool. They didn’t know they were racing me. Or maybe they did; I don’t know. Maybe they were doing the same thing to me. We never talked about it.

I started tinkering with my workout. I tried to remember the workouts from when I was a kid– that was fruitless. I turned to online to look for help, and initially that was only mildly helpful. Workouts are all over the place in terms of intensity, distance and goals. Triathlons have become popular forms of exercise and there are a number of suggestions for workouts as part of triathlon training. I looked at some of those and mixed things up a bit, but nothing really fit right. Eventually I discovered a website run by some Kiwis out of New Zealand that provided customized workouts. Swimplan asks you to enter some basic information about yourself, your swim ability and your facilities and then kicks out up to five workouts every day for you to choose from. By this point I was swimming regularly five days a week: three times during the workweek and twice on weekends. I signed up, punched in my basic numbers and waited to see what it would suggest. It kicked out at 2200 yard workout, nearly double what I had been swimming on a daily basis. But the workout was broken down into sections: warm up, build up, core and warm down. It had sets. It had intervals. It suggested appropriate rest and intensity levels. It was, essentially, a stand in coach.

And I ate it up. I took that first workout with me to the pool and was through it much faster than I had anticipated. And I felt great afterward. I thought I would be completely gassed after doubling my workout. I wasn’t. Over the next few months I refined my information, added time trial data. I bought some paddles and a pull bouy so I could drill with those. Swimplan supplies appropriate drills depending on what equipment you tell it you have.

Swimming was very much part of my daily routine. Whirl commented that if I went too many days without swimming, I would grow crabbier and irritable. Complete a workout and I would return to calm, cool and collected. Endorphins are amazing that way. I got to know a few of the regular swimmers at the pool, people I ran into every week. In more than a few conversations, it was suggested that I look into Masters swimming. In mid-October I followed up on those suggestions and I’ve been very happy about that decision ever since.

The end of the year has been plagued by some facilities problems with my regular lunchtime gym. The pool has been intermittently out of commission starting in November. So an added benefit of joining the team is that team practice has given me another outlet while the gym tries to fix their pool.

My highlight accomplishment has to have been the Hour of Power workout in late December. The workout was very simple: swim non-stop for an hour. They kept track of our distance and recorded our time at the end of every 50. I swam 3850 yards in an hour, approximately 2.2 miles. And what is more impressive is that I kept a much steadier pace than I could have hoped for.

Some accomplishments over the past year swimming:

• Weight Loss : 43 pounds
• Weight Loss : 6 inches off my waist
• One hour nonstop distance : 3850 yards
• 100 Free : 1:13
• 200 Free : 2:41
• 500 Free : 7:23
• 1000 Free : 15:26
• 100 Back : 1:35
• 100 Breast : 1:36

I plan to use those results to build some goals for the next year. But before that, it’s off to the races!

(Timothy Clary/AFP Photo)

In January I started swimming regularly for the first time in about twenty years. When I wrote about it at the time I said that I wasn’t swimming for competition; I said that I was just doing it for myself. And I think I meant that. Now it’s ten months later and I’ve been steadily adding more and more to my workouts and swimming has pretty much taken over from my other exercise routine. I started off swimming 1000 yards three days a week. As I got more comfortable, I added a fourth day and then a fifth. Then I started edging up the distance. I was swimming faster and requiring less time to rest. I started keeping a log of my distance totals and every once in a while I would time myself. You know, just to see how I was doing. Nothing serious.

Of course there was absolutely nothing vaguely competitive about any of this. Racing never crossed my mind– not even when I caught myself secretly trying to pass the guy in the lane next to me. I found Swimplan and punched in some of the statistics I’d gathered over those first few months to establish a profile. I have really appreciated Swimplan and have recommended it to several of the other regulars I’ve met at the pool. That first workout added fifty percent more to my regular workout, and it’s kept steadily increasing ever since. Up until last week, I was averaging a total of 10000 yards per week. I’ve fallen into a comfortable routine — five days on, two days off — swimming Friday through Tuesday. On the three weekdays I swim over my lunch break; The pool is just two blocks away. On the weekends, I try to swim first thing in the morning.

Then a couple of things happened in rapid succession that altered my thinking. In one week at the pool I had three people ask me if I swam competitively: two mentioning the US Masters Swimming program, and the third talking to me about triathlons. At the time, this seemed like coincidence, but now I can say with some confidence that it probably wasn’t entirely coincidence. The Chicago Triathlon, the Wisconsin Ironman and the Chicago Marathon were all scheduled to run within about a month of the comments, marking the culmination of the summer triathlon season.

A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim for. — Bruce Lee

I had a new goal. I’d accomplished most of what I’d sought out to do. I was comfortable in the water again. I was getting stronger and continuing to lose weight. I was feeling better about myself. The objective data was there for anyone to analyse: times were quicker, distances longer. It was time to step it up again.

So last weekend I signed up for Masters swimming. I joined a team and last night I attended my first official workout. The Chicago Blue Dolphins practice out of the UIC facility about a mile and a half from home on the southeastern corner of the campus. It has two gorgeous pools in the building. The large pool is a huge pool: eight lane 50-meter by ten lane 25-yard pool and a large diving well offset on the deep end. The small pool is a more typical six lane 25-yard pool. The workouts are challenging, effectively doubling the longer workouts I’ve been doing on my own through Swimplan. New drills, new techniques and coaches there to help make adjustments and provide encouragement.

From what I can tell, the competitive swim meet season starts in January, so I’ve got a bit of time left to practice before then. Regardless, it’s a powerful motivation and one I’m really excited about undertaking.