mtbc | Swimming

My weekday routine has me swim in Perth before work in Dundee. I try to be in the pool before 0645 and start with front crawl. I allow myself to mix in some backstroke after 0700 and breaststroke after 0720. I finish shortly after 0725. The timing works out for giving Benjamin a lift to his bus stop and snagging one of the last parking spaces beside the life sciences research complex.

Swimming is pretty much about the only exercise I get and I definitely do need some form of aerobic exercise in my life. I like swimming partly because it works various muscles and is low-impact but mostly because it keeps me cool. If I try to work out then I feel uncomfortably hot very quickly, I don't know why. With the water running over me all the time I can keep exercising without overheating. I swim at a gym and spa with a single pool serving for both; the water isn't as cool as lap swimming pools, certainly not outdoor ponds, but it's still just about cool enough to be tolerable while I swim.

Sometimes swimming feels like hard work and the best times are when I can swim faster and it doesn't feel like hard work. Yesterday morning had some lengths like that which is why I was annoyed to skip swimming today with my earache as I hope that if I work enough then it usually won't feel like work. I often swim harder when I am sharing the lane, to try to maintain enough speed difference from others that we mostly remain comfortably separate. The lane is wide enough for swimmers in opposite directions to pass, so we swap side at each end. If, as is usual, I am sharing the lane, I stick to just front crawl, so as to be narrow and see what's going on. Sometimes there are even four or five of us in the lane.

I don't want to suggest that I am a great swimmer. At our small gym, I am probably averagely fast among those who do more than a slow, gentle breaststroke. Some men and women I often see there are clearly consistently rather faster than I. I don't even bother with wearing goggles and keeping my head fully in the water and suchlike, and I often take things fairly easy: if weekdaily^* my routine is more pleasant than bothersome then it is more sustainable.

I am left-handed and when I do front crawl I turn my head to the left to breathe. Yesterday I noticed that another frequent swimmer, one faster than I, also turns his head to the left. Perhaps he's left-handed, or one of us is unusual, or perhaps one's handedness has little to do with which way one turns their head.

^*What's the word for words whose meaning is obvious but they aren't really accepted as words?