Swimming For Dummies

I decided that to start my training for next May's Half-Triathlon I would begin with swimming. My reasoning has to do with my being overweight combined with poor knees. Swimming is so soft on the joints that it is nearly impossible to do any damage to my joints when swimming the short distances that I will be swimming.

I started the swimming portion of my training by taking 3 Aqua Aerobics classes last week at 24 Hour Fitness centers in St. Louis and in my hometown. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. My knees did feel better, almost as if the exercise increased the joint's lubrication. And all of this was done without any joint pain! What a relief!

I called my son who is a swim coach in Arizona and asked him for his recommendation on a training regimen. Although I swam competitively in high school I have forgotten what we did in the form of workouts. He recommended that I start out by swimming 100 yards six times, starting a new 100 yards every three minutes. He was extremely optimistic I discovered.

Last night I decided to try his approach since the 24 Hour Fitness Centers here on Oahu do not offer the Aqua Aerobics class. I only found one center that had a lap pool so last night I started off for the interior of the island to find this one center. After my first 50 yards I realized that my son's plan was not going to work for me and I immediately changed it to six 50 yard swims on the same three minutes. Sadly, I couldn't even do that.

My first 50 yards I swam freestyle. When it was time to start my second 50 yard swim I was still so tired from the first one that I switched to breaststroke. I then repeated that freestyle/breaststroke pattern for my third and fourth 50 yard swims. At this point I noticed that there was a clock in the pool area that was large enough for me to see the second hand so I timed my fifth 50 yard swim, using freestyle. I was very disappointed to learn that it took me nearly a minute to swim 50 yards. In high school I used to do that same distance multiple times in about 40 seconds. We would swim 10 - 50 yard swims on the minute (meaning we would start out at the top of every minute, the faster we swam, the more rest we got).

My last (6th) 50 yard swim was done using backstroke and it took a minute 10 seconds. I was tired and slow. Its a good thing I have 8 months to get in shape. I looks like I'm going to need most of it just to survive the swimming.