Sunday, June 28, 2015

You Have Great Endurance!

My husband was bragging on me at work the other day, which was sweet.  He told me one of his co-workers commented that I must have amazing endurance, because she gets winded swimming two laps of the pool.

People do look at the middle-aged woman given to serious enbonpoint, watch her swim for an hour in a pool or around a lake and they do express they're impressed, especially when they compare it to their own swimming skill.

Here's the thing.  If you don't have a lot of practice swimming, just jump in the pool and go, you'll be hanging on the edge gasping, staring at the fat lady in the next lane just gliding along, and wondering if she's a freak of nature or something.

She might be, but she's probably not.

Swimming is about technique. The better your technique, the easier it is, and the more effortless it looks.  My own husband will comment after I have been working very hard in the water that I make it look easy.

But there's a flip side.  I'm the barest beginner at this sort of thing, and I'm really not that fast or strong.  Sure, sure, I'm strong enough to swim a couple of miles and that's cool.  But it takes me close on to two hours to do it.

The common wisdom is a 4:1 conversion between running and swimming, so using that calculation, my best swimming pace over an hour is slightly under a 12 minute mile and my Kingdom Swim was more like 15 minute miles.

That's a brisk walk, friends.  Not as impressive as all that.

1 comment:

IronMike said...

I get the same comments, and most look at me oddly when I tell them I'd rather swim for 3 or 4 hours than run a couple miles.