In the summer of 2009, I started swimming again fairly seriously for the first time since high school. I’d swum on and off during the rest of college and grad school, but never more than two or three days a week, and usually just making up workouts as I went. I returned to the pool in earnest last year to train for the Devil’s Challenge Triathlon, which I did as a relay with Veronica and our friend Patrick. But after the Triathlon was over, I decided to keep swimming. I had occasionally been getting workouts from my friend Fritz, who runs the Masters swim team at UW, and I started doing them more regularly. I also soon found a swim buddy in April, an art ed. major who’d been doing the same workouts as me at roughly the same time. It’s amazing how much harder you can work with a friend to push you!
At the beginning of 2010, I decided to start keeping track of my swim workouts. To do so, I’ve been using Ugomo, a very useful web-based workout log with some social media features. Ugomo lets you track workouts and your weight, set goals, and visualize your workout data in various ways. If you’re a runner or cyclist, it also lets you map rides/runs and store your regular routes. You can also see what other people are doing and comment on their workouts, although in my experience this doesn’t happen much on the site.
I set a goal of 365 miles over the course of the year, which I knew was a pretty ambitious mark. I started out pretty well, swimming five or six days a week; I was even ahead of my goal pace by the end of February. But little things like finishing my dissertation; giving two recitals; trips to Seattle (twice), Maine, and Britain; and moving across the country really cut into my pool time. Luckily, I now have access to the wonderful outdoor pool at the University of the Pacific, and I’ve been able to make up some of my lost ground. I didn’t make it anywhere close to my original goal, but I did manage to swim 208 1/4 miles this year — roughly the distance from the White House to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in NYC (as the crow flies). Thanks to Ugomo, I also know that I spent a total of 5 days, 8 hours, and 27 minutes in one pool or another.
Even at my fastest in the last year, I was still a ways off my best times from high school, which was the last time I swam competitively. Then again, I haven’t tested myself in an actual meet situation recently. I hope to up my total distance during 2011, and maybe I’ll also find a Masters meet or two in which to participate. But, even if I am past my swimming prime, I’m still in better shape than I’ve been in years. Plus I think think that swimming, more so than other forms of exercise, gives me lung capacity and breath control training that benefits me as a woodwind player (perhaps more on that in a future post). I’ve had my last swim for this year already, but I look forward to starting anew in January.











