Last night I was determined to get to the pool to do some laps. Determined! I had the will but not the way (aka the time). Isn’t that old phrase: “where there’s a will there’s a way”? Well, sometimes there just isn’t a way, like when you have 3 kids and have to: drop a car at the shop, wrap presents, take kids to a cousin’s birthday party, pack separate food for your food-allergic child to eat at the party, put the 1yo down for a nap, take the 7yo to a swimming party, make dinner, pick up the car from the shop, do laundry since the 3yo is out of underwear, put the kids to bed, and stop off at the wine store because we have a winemergency.
And when we are out of wine, it is truly a winemergency because how can you handle a Saturday like that if you don’t have wine to look forward to at the end of it?
Once upon a time I had Saturdays that were relaxing. Ah, those were the days…
So I put the 18 month old to bed and my up-for-anything au pair and I decided to hit the neighborhood pool to do laps. My husband handled the not-happy-about-it 3.5 year old, and we quietly snuck out.
Brrr… the water felt pretty chilly and I was a total wuss getting in the pool like the older women I used to make fun of as a kid at the pool, until I realized – Oh wait! I am one of those older ladies now, OMG!!! – and jumped right in. Defy the old lady stereotype!
Once I got going the water felt GREAT! I, however, started to feel like I had a lot of work to do to build up my endurance and work on my form for the triathlon. I swam 3 freestyle/1 breaststroke lengths (or laps? Weigh in below!) a few times and thought I just might be done now. So I rested on the side of the pool and decided to work on my form and get into a better groove. And when I started back up, it felt better and better each length. In fact, I could have kept going, except the lifeguards were hating us by that point – it was 9pm and the pool was closing.
I ended up doing 24 lengths, and although I know I have a lot to work on in the next 3 months, I’m feeling pretty good about my first pool training session of the official Triathlon training.
After spending my entire childhood practically living at the pool every summer, on the swim team and later as a lifeguard, I’m now perplexed by the length vs. lap distinction. I’m sure now that a lap = there & back, but that means my entire childhood memories are wrong. Ack, I’m not sure I can handle this mental mind game – my mind is blown.
Do you call them lengths or laps?
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