Swimming

I have wanted to learn to surf for more than a year now but the only way to do it in my price range (besides making surfing friends, i must know every single non surfer in this town) is the school swim class which is very cheap (the price of one regular surf lesson for 6 lessons or 6 weeks of lessons or something) and always fills up immediately. So right now my plan is to get much stronger at swimming (I think I would be all right with a surfboard on an ankle leash at the beginner beach but definitely if I got swept away I would just have to go with it, and if I lost my board it is very unlikely I could catch up with it unless it went toward shore) in the pool and then in summer when I don't have pool access I will swim in the ocean for short times and build my endurance.

I have been swimming at the pool twice a week since the start of the quarter (about a month) and it has been great, but last week I went swimming in the ocean and it was discouraging. I didn't have a way of keeping track of time but I played in the waist-chest high water for maybe a half hour and then went swimming where the waves swell (deeper out than where they break) but in water i could easily bob off the bottom for air instead of having to tread water, and I swam for about 10 minutes or 15 at the very most and it was so tiring. I was trying to work against the water (for the exercise, I know that is a slow way to get anywhere) just to get up the beach to where my friend was, and it was impossible. So I swam back to shore, and I was panting and everything, and very cold. So obviously I need to swim a lot more so surfing can be a safer undertaking.

I usually try to swim for 600m in freestyle, breaststroke, and backstroke and then I am pretty tired and alternate using aids for my arms or legs so each has a turn to rest for another 100m and then I am too tired to climb out of the pool and have to encroach on the lane of whoever has the ladder. Today I had brand new goggles (thanks so much mom!) and a whole lane to myself because I went late but after 500m the pool closed because it closes at 7:30 and not 8 like I thought. But it opens tomorrow at 8:30 and I don't have any obligations until 10 so I am going swimming tomorow morning. Then I have errands, learning to weld at the metalshop, volunteer at the co-op for 2 hours, and hopefully more time in the metalshop if it is still open, plus also a one page paper and a really solid painting and a proposal packet, all due wednesday. So I have a bit of a busy day but I think I might need a swim at the end of it, especially if I don't make it over there in the morning as I am planning to.

So I made a goal of going swimming every day this week (going twice tomorrow is only one day of course) which is not a huge goal because it is right on the other side of campus and there is a bus I can take (which I plan to always take on the way back because I am all sodden) but at the same time it means getting out of bed on a weekend to go exercise, and also I will almost certainly have a sunburn by then. (sunscreen doesn't even pretend to last through an hour of swimming, it says on the label to reapply after 15 minutes or something, and then wait half an hour before going in the sun.) But maybe not because I have a bit of a tan (I love tans!) and that might keep me from burning.

Now I am looking up things to do while swimming, like drills, because I got a little bored today.