learning to count

I've been a bit delinquent lately - both with the blog and my training.

The operas that I've been working on momentarily took over my life. They open on Friday/Saturday so everything should settle back to normal soon. Until then - I'm sneaking in a workout when I can find it.

Yesterday was a swim day and I knew I wouldn't have time to swim after work before rehearsal (been getting home around 4:30 and have to be in St. Paul by 6...I need an hour and a half just to do the workout at this point) so I decided to swim over my lunch at the downtown YWCA. I walked the two blocks to the gym in the rain and went for a swim. My goal, after warming up was to swim 1600 yards or 32 laps which is approximately the distance for the swim in the race. The challenge then becomes how to keep track of how far I've gone. All too often in the middle of a swim I find myself without a clue as to how much I've swum. I was determined this wasn't going to happen.

First, I decided to complete two 800's without a rest. (It's easier to count to 16 without losing your place.) The first 800 I counted from 16 to 1 - a tip I picked up from SELF magazine in order to give yourself a feeling of accomplishment when you get to the end. In order not to lose what lap on was on I would think what happened to me in a certain year. (i.e. what happened when I was 15 years old, 12, 9 (I couldn't remember anything that happened when I was 9...)).

The second 800 became more complicated. I divided the 800 into 100's but didn't want to lose where I was in the 100 so I counted like this: 1.1 (first 100, first half), 1.2 (first 100, second half), 2.3 (second 100, first half), 2.4 (second 100, second half). I was counting the 100's and the 50's...you know for good measure.

I came back to work re-energized (though I crashed about an hour later due to lunch) and will work-out more often during the day. And the downtown YW is super nice. STEAM ROOM!

It's exactly a month from the triathlon...time to count the days....

Namaste

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