Swimming

I went to the pool again today since it's raining appallingly and my thigh muscles are still killing me from the bright idea I had to try some speed work during my short and painful run the other day. Plus I'm still committed to the whole cross-training idea too (give me at least another week to become less than enchanted). So I trot off to the pool in an completely inappropriate bathing suit since the only one I own not designed for sitting *beside* the pool and soaking up the sun was in the washing machine (only half way through its cycle). So we've established that I look stupid with a sun worshipper suit, cap and goggles on. I get to the pool and my inner swimming snob comes out. Water aerobics has commandeered most of the pool (no surprise) and there's one guy in the slow lane and one guy in the fast lane. They are both swimming like drunks weaving down a sidewalk and neither one is particularly fast. So I hop into the fast lane (I still have delusions of grandeur from my previous swimming career--plus the slow lane is right next to the wall and you get hit with the jets) and the guy moves over to make room for me. Luckily slow lane guy gets out and I slide over there instead so I can have a lane to myself. I poke my way through my own workout, noting as I do that fast lane guy is at least faster than my breast stroke, which if you knew me in my swimming days you'll know is still not a great recommendation for his being in the fast lane. But he doesn't hang around too much longer and when he leaves, I slide over into the fast lane (also an optimistic designation for me at this point) to avoid the wall jets. Being in the fast lane gives me a good view of the lower halves of all the older folks doing water aerobics. This is not a pretty sight (and lest you think I'm being mean, my own jiggles would make me a rather unappealing sight in the same situation) and I spend as much of my swim as possible breathing and looking toward the empty lane instead of at the wiggles and jiggles of the portly, lily white, over 60 crowd. The one time I forget exactly why I am looking the other direction, I look back towards the class and am horrified to see something glutinous and opaque making its way undulating and amoeba-like through the waves the class has generated. ::gag:: That, combined with the 5 100 IM's I barely managed to pull off convinced me that swimming was over for the day. I will note that I did a total of 1500 yards and didn't cheat even one stroke on the butterfly legs of the IM's. And finally, thank the good heaven for chlorine because I don't know what the thing in the water was, nor do I want to know. As long as it wasn't carrying some communicable disease, and thanks to the chlorine it most likely wasn't, I might even find my way back to the pool again--but not for a few days so the filters can deal with whatever it was!