Things are going swimmingly

This week's plan has been going fabulously. I've stuck to everything so far, and I haven't felt this good in a long time. The highlight was last night, when I made it to the pool for my first swim in at least two years. It was WONDERFUL. HEAVEN. BLISS. I can't convey how good it felt. The water was a soothing 80 degrees, and I had the entire pool to myself. I swear I was a fish in a former life because nothing feels as good to me as being in water.

It definitely kicked my ass - I figure I did around 1,500 yards in 40 minutes - and some of those yards were all-out sprints. It's a little sad to realize how much strength I've lost in the past 10 years - I used to do 1,500 yards for a warm up! A 5,000-yard practice was a walk in the park. But, I'm not going to let that discourage me. I wish I would have kept up on my swimming; I didn't. It's behind me, and now I need to move forward and work toward getting back to where I once was.

Tonight it's back to the rec center to do some elliptical work, weights and abs. I'm really loving this gym. I'm also loving my decision to add variety to my workouts. So far, I'm finding it much easier to motivate myself to exercise when I know it's going to be something different every night, not just another boring run. I also think it's going to be really good for my bum knee, as I already can feel the muscles my P.T. told me to work on being strengthened.

Oh - another note about swimming. I found www.swimplan.com today. The jury is still out on this site, but it's definitely a cool concept to have a personal swim workout made for you each day. The workouts I've received so far are not really great - one of them just had me doing a straight 1,500-yard swim. That's worth nothing to me. I need increments, something to build on. Swimming for 30 minutes straight is useless. Another workout had me doing 32 50-yard sprints - also worthless. I need variety. I'm starting to believe that my 15 years of competitive swimming experience is enough to allow me to make up my own workouts. Swimplan is nice, though, for drills. I've forgotten a lot of the drills and their workouts seem to include two or three every day.

Tomorrow, I may have to work late and if that happens, swimming is out. (Yes, my place of employment is that awesome that they're requiring us to be here on V-Day.) I found out this pool is open on Saturdays for a couple hours so I may have to do that and move gym time to Sunday. We'll see. I definitely only want one rest day per week so as long as I can make up a missed day, it'll be fine.