I\u2019m going to blame the lifeguard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Way back in the day, when I first started swimming, I asked the lifeguard on duty how many laps to the mile.\u00a0 They told me 36 and since the olympic sized pool was configured for lanes across the pool – instead of the length – I figured that was the number to shoot for.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I worked my way up to that and eventually could do it without too much trouble. From there, I used 36 as the basis for my mile and could do another 18 (\u00bd mile) if I was feeling my oats. (Literally, oatmeal 30 minutes before swimming is the way to go.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even, occasionally, doing 72 laps – 2 miles – if I had enough time and had eaten properly. And each lap was recorded in a spreadsheet with a formula to calculate the number of miles I\u2019d done in a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A couple of weeks ago, I overheard two guys talking in the locker-room – one confirming that the other had done 36 laps and then congratulating him on the half mile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uh-oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked it up when I got home and sure enough, 36 of the \u201clong\u201d laps in an olympic pool is a mile. Instead of doing all those miles – and then bragging about it – I was only going half as far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m literally half as good of a swimmer as I thought I was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disheartened, I took a week off from swimming. Tomorrow, I\u2019ll start again and though I\u2019ll still do 36 laps and still record them – I\u2019ve gotten rid of the formula to turn those laps into miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The important bit is that swimming has made me stronger and improved my stamina. And these shoulders? Epic – at least for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And for everyone that knew better when I talked about my laps and didn\u2019t tell me – thank you. For a while there, I was feeling pretty amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Half as amazing now, but I still rock that speedo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m going to blame the lifeguard. Way back in the day, when I first started swimming, I asked the lifeguard on duty how many laps to the mile.\u00a0 They told me 36 and since the olympic sized pool was configured for lanes across the pool – instead of the length – I figured that was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}