It’s been challenging to get to the pool this week.  Mondays are always out. On Tuesday, I knew I was going grocery shopping and didn’t want to do that with wet hair.  Yesterday I got rolling too late to make it to the pool.  My hair appointment’s today, so it was today or not at all for two more weeks.

I got going at a decent hour, and made it to the pool around 5:40 A.M.  The road was blocked.  No problem, I thought.  I drove around the back way.  The parking lot was pretty empty, and a woman looked at me as she got in her car.  “The water main broke,” I heard her tell someone else when I opened my car door.  “So the Y’s closed?” I asked.  “Well, yeah, ” she said, surprised at my bluntness.

It was still early.  I decided to drive across town to the other Y.  I got there at 6.  Every lane was occupied, but a man told me he was finishing up when I entered the pool area.  I thanked him and started swimming.  He was done before I finished my first lap.

I had the goal of increasing my freestyle in mind, along with the idea that maybe I should warm up doing a stroke other than freestyle.  I started out with breast stroke, then back stroke, then freestyle.  The freestyle still wiped me out!  I ended up taking a panting break in the middle of my 100 free, feeling like a big wimp.

I knew I wanted to increase my freestyle yardage, but I also wanted to swim my usual 4 100 IMs and time them, so I decided to add the freestyle to the back end of the set, after the IMs.  My times were:  2:55.29, 2:49.14, 2:51.56, and 2:58.61.  Nothing spectacular, compared with the last time I swam, but the real significance of this workout was getting through it.  I was beat.  That may have to do with the fact that the baby woke up three times in the night, most recently at 3:45, and I didn’t go back to sleep after that time.

In the end,  I swam more elementary back stroke than anything else, boo for me!  I swam the same 400 freestyle yards that I had last time, and actually decreased my yardage in back and breast strokes.  And I swam 1600 total yards, just like last time, forgetting that I was supposed to swim 1700.

Was it worth it, even will all these missteps?  You bet.  My message this week?  Just get to the pool.