ZERO to 1650: week 1 day 1

It’s been a while – a long while – but I’m finally feeling the desire to get moving on the fitness front again. I seem to really enjoy following a training plan, but really hate actually participating in whatever event that training was intended for. I am not a racer. Once I figured that out, I felt a little bit at loose ends. How/why do you you train for something but not train for something?

I still really really want to get back into a strength training routine, but the one I’ve chosen to follow requires more of a time commitment than I can give it right now. Scratch that and insert honesty: it requires more of a time commitment than I want to give it right now. Rather than do something less than what I want, I’ve been doing nothing.

Enter this swimming training plan. The goal is to be able to swim a mile, non-stop, in six weeks. I’ve been wanting to get back into a swimming routine – I feel so good when I’m doing it regularly, but in the past have always had trouble getting to the pool during lap swim hours. Enter a new pool just a mile and a half from my house. Lanes are available all day, water is ever-so-slightly warmer than the other pool, and the pool/building setup is so swanky I feel like I’m at a resort. Cons? It’s kind of pricey. I’ve decided the good far outweighs the price and I got myself a ten-entry pass to get myself off to a good start.

Today I went swimming for the first time in forever. It felt great to be in the water! The workout was a total of 700 metres: 4X100, 4X50, 4X25, with plenty of rests built in. Much to my surprise, I was able to stick with the 100s and only pause for a rest at the prescribed time. In the past 100 metres would have been too much for me. I think not because of my swimming ability or even my fitness level, but because I used to get oddly panicky in the water and get short of breath. I figured out the why of that (which I’ll discuss sometime soon) and was able to avoid it by applying a few simple measures.

So now, I have a training plan to follow. I have an event that’s not an event to train for. I’ll train to swim a mile, but there will be no crowd, no starting gun, no confusion and panic. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner