# Back in the pool



## Chris Hobson (Jul 10, 2021)

A former regular in this section of the forum, I have been absent for just over a year. There are various reasons for this, lots of events being cancelled, a slightly niggly bad knee and a retirement coupled with a commitment to sort out the jungle of long grass, brambles and overgrown shrubs that is my garden. The gym has been open for a while now and has finally dropped most of the more onerous anti Covid measures so I've just been for my first swim in a very long while. I have a rucksack specifically for my swimming gear and so I had all the relevant stuff together. My swimming trunks seem to have shrunk while sitting in the drawer but I still managed to squeeze into them, muffin tops are in evidence however. I'm happy that I don't seem to have forgotten how to swim and managed a thousand metres alternating lengths of breast stroke and front crawl at a fairly sedate pace. I don't really see gardening as being real fitness work but I don't seem to be too unfit. I replaced my sports watch last year and this is the first time that I've been swimming since I got it. As I finished my swim it gave me five awards for setting new records. This of course means that I will have to put in a bit more effort next time.

Since my dodgy knee is now preventing me from running and also limiting the distance that I can cycle it seems likely that I will have to give up doing triathlons. In order to keep feeding my addiction to insanely masochistic physical challenges I am considering doing something swimming based. The idea that I am toying with is to see if I can swim 500 miles in a year. I stress that at this point in time I'm only thinking about it, if I do decide to commit, this is one of the first places that I will be making an announcement.

Edit.
Here are some of the numbers involved, rounded up so we aren't going to nine decimal places all the time.
500 miles = 805 kilometers.
I would need to swim 1.37 miles or 2.2 kilometers per day on average, 88 lengths. This works out at 9.6 miles or 15.5 kilometers per week, 620 lengths. How hard can it be? Of course I would have to work on getting ahead in case there are days when I can't swim. I would also have to work on getting swim fit before the start date otherwise the first few weeks would be somewhat tough.

Edit #2
I have now contacted a local charity to enquire whether they would like to be the focus of any fundraising efforts that might result from my swimming efforts. Once they come back to me I will be at the point where I have to make a decision to commit.

Edit #3
It's the first week in August and I am attempting to swim 10 miles or 16 kilometers in a week. This should give me some idea about what I am taking on. I'm posting this edit on the 1st of August and I did  4k swim this morning, it took me just over two hours. I'm hoping to do slightly longer swims than strictly necessary so that I don't have to swim every single day. I'm planning on doing either three more 4k swims or four more 3k swims depending on how it goes.


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