50 Mile Club

Like many gyms with pools, my gym has this little challenge they put out every year where you try to swim a certain distance over a period of time.

Ours is the 50 Mile Club.  From May 1 to August 31, you log the yardage you swim and try to log at fifty miles over that time.  The head of the aquatics program is the lifeguard on Monday mornings.  She came up to me with a card already filled out, presuming I'd be doing it.

Yes, I will.  Probably will even complete it for the first time.  The times I've done it in the past I've run out of steam. But I have an event in September I need to keep training for.

In reality the challenge is about 12.5 miles a month, so it's not really all that outrageous if you're training for something. Even in a crap month, I've been doing that, so yeah, I'll be making it this year. They do count 2000 yards as a mile, so the real challenge is more like 56 miles all told. But who's counting?

Yeah, you guessed it.  Me.

This is really gotten me thinking about bumping up my pool yardage for my training sessions, because no open water swims or swims I do that are not in my gym count.  I'm going to be away for a fair whack of May, and while I'll be swimming, it won't be in my usual pool.   Weekends, I'm going to be in the open water, getting used to colder water, learning sighting, training with my husband who will be my kayaker for a swim I am doing in June and getting a feel for lake swimming.  I figure a few sessions out on a lake will give us a good idea of how we work together, 

For all that I will be doing the 50 Mile Club thing, what I am really itching to do is finally get out in the open water and see what more I need to learn and train for.  I feel like I've done 'most everything I reasonably can in a pool, other than keep up my form and fitness.