Short Pond

We had graduation Friday so after that I went home, ate lunch, and tried to take a nap. Then you can probably guess what I did next. Yeah, I went to the pond, but I left the dogs at home. Time was a bit limited, I was tired, and I just wanted to simplify things some. Besides, I didn't plan on staying long. I only wanted a third swim and a chance to see how the muscles felt after the ten-miler.

I mixed things up some starting with one lap for a warm up. Then I got out my small paddles. The small Speedo Power Paddle is my favorite. Few people will swim with them because they always want to go larger. But bigger is not always better, however. I like them because they give me some resistance, but my stroke feels the same. With anything large, the stroke rate slows and it feels funny.

Not only that, but one night at Masters a few months back, I went to pull my paddles out only to find one missing. One paddle is worthless, like one shoe. You have a pair or you have nothing. I thought I must have left one on deck the Masters the week before, so one of the coaches and I made a diligent search of all the storage areas. We struck out. Then at home, I searched everywhere. No paddles.

To make things even worse, when I went online to buy a replacement pair, I could not find that particular paddle. What Speedo now calls their Power Paddle has been totally redesigned. Dude, I just want my paddle back, and I am willing to pay for it. To make a short story long, I was taking a small cooler out of the front of my truck the other day when I saw something peeking out from under the front seat. It was my long lost paddle!!! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

The old Speedo small is my favorite.

It is getting a bit late to swim with paddles seeing how Chicot is drawing so near. But I wanted to feel that old feeling one more time. So like I did last week, I added some crossings with the pair of smalls. By the way, I worked out the math and found exactly how far it is across. The swimmable porting is 112.63 meters. I measured the crossing with my GPS watch several times and came up with .07th of a mile. Multiplied by 1609 yields 112 meters. Last week, I had guessed 120. Shoot me, I was wrong. I did four crossing with the paddles and rested about 30 seconds after each. Then I did another slow and easy lap. After that it was two crossing at about 85% effort.

I climbed out after that and stopped with 2.06 miles. Good enough for the day. This brings me to 26,000 and change for the week. Praise be to God. Up next: Monster Week coming to a catfish pond and blog near you. Stay tuned and help me us pray for Chicot Challenge VI. We need good weather, low winds, and protection. I need good training and full recovery from each workout.