I swam a mile! ...almost.

Yesterday I really threw myself into it. Partly this was inspired by wanting to wear that dress I mentioned and partly by how much I love feeling fins on my feet. It's awesome, y'all! You really zoom.

I wasn't sure exactly how long the pool was or how far a mile was, so I just kept at it for about 45 minutes with little rest breaks here and there. I ended up swimming underneath people at one point because there were too many people in my lane and the fins made me faster than anyone else, so I kept lapping them. It was just easier to go underneath along the bottom than to go around.

This happened when I did a lot of swimming before, too: you feel really great, then you get tired, and then you get to this point where it feels like you could go on forever. I never feel this when trying to run. Maybe it's because I'm so busy hating the running that I can't concentrate on the other feeling? What I love about this is how I don't think about how I look while I'm doing it. I don't think about how my thighs look when they move or how the excess weight feels. I can really appreciate how strong my body is instead of what it looks like.

This is liberating!

I was going along and then noticed that my left ankle was starting to feel a little sore, so I looked and sure enough I had a half-circle of popped blister around it on the back side where the fin was rubbing a bit. I really need to get some neoprene fin socks. I wasn't exhausted, but I wasn't sure how much a mile was either, and I didn't know how close I was to it, so I decided to call it a day. I'd done 34 laps. A mile is 35! I was THISCLOSE! Next time I will do it for sure.

My ankle is still pretty raw today, so we'll see if I can swim Wednesday or if I need to lift weights or something instead. I'd go without the fins, but it might sting in the chlorine and it'd be super gross if I saw someone else in there with a wound, so I'll probably wait. Weights for my upper body would be nice and help out with the swimming later. It hurt even touching my ankle to the sheets in bed last night, so I'm thinking yanking a neoprene sock up over it would be a bad scene.

They are not kidding when they say that long fins make your legs work a lot harder! You gain speed, but boy does it work your thighs. This is a great thing for me! I have a lot of thigh muscle, but it really needs to be toned.

I set a goal for myself of 2 miles during a single swimming session. If I can do that, I can get the dress. This will probably take a while... 70 laps is a lot! A lap isn't just one trip across the pool, either. It's down and back. So 140 trips across the pool, whoa. Maybe by the time I accomplish this feat, my rear will have slimmed a bit!