Week of 1/11-1/17

I had a pretty good training week considering I'm still going around like Hopalong Cassidy. Did he limp? The name suggests he did, but I think maybe he didn't. I do, however, and I am beginning to feel a little dangerous. I lifted weights four times last week and that helped keep me from going totally crazy. I pumped iron until my arms fell off and then I picked them off the ground and put them back on with duct tape. I even managed three swims, though one of them was a little suspect. Once I went to the Endless Fool and lasted thirty-three in the 96 degree water.

I already wrote about Tuesday at DSU. Thursday I swam

1,050
400 small paddles
400 swim
400 medium paddles
400 swim r :20 for all

Then I started back while Mark was finishing and kept on until Ricky finished his 400 and consequently I got another 500 in. That was the end of Masters for Mark and me, but Ricky, who got there late, had another 400 to go. I swam with him and lapped him once for an additional 450. Ricky left but I stayed and did 12 X 150 @ 3:15 and then finished with an easy 50.

I left thinking I had done 5,250 yards. I even had a note pad on deck and wrote everything down so I would not get confused. Usually I keep the numbers in my head,  and I go home and write it all down and do the math only to discover my running total in my head was off by 100 meters or yards. Almost always, I am off by 100. So I wrote everything down because I wanted to beat last year's swim at this time, and I didn't want to discover too late that I was off by 100. When I did the math at home, guess what? No, I was not off by 100. I was off by 1,000!!! Dude, who does that? At least I was over and not under, finishing with 6,250. For the week, I swam 12,021 meters.

I had a friend once who confided in me that the evidence was mounting that he was a lazy person but he just couldn't accept that judgment of himself. In my mind, I silently agreed that the evidence was correct. Be that as it may, there is a mounting body of evidence that I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Besides bad head math and horrendous paper math, I do a lot of things most average-intelligence people consider stupid. For one, I will try a swim at any water temperature from 50-110 Fahrenheit, although I fail frequently in the lower range. For another, I hang out with a skeleton, Buddy Bones, and talk out loud to him and myself. Just one more example. I have over 1,000 photographs on my phone. Over 950 of them are of cats. Here's one: (This blog is not doing pictures today).

Have a nice MLK Day. And be nice to a cat.