Easy, Relaxed Swimming: 4,150 meters

The guest house I stayed at in Chialeshui in early February. The roads are great for biking and running and the house had wireless so I could access the Internet on my laptop. This place is two hours' drive from our home in Kaohsiung, but closer to six hours' drive if you happen to live in Taipei.

Today, I did not really have a plan about how I was going to swim (no fax arrived from my coach!), but I got up and got ready and biked to the pool, entering the water at about 6:25 am, so that time was a little bit on my side today. Fortunately, in the middle lane of the pool, which has a sign in Chinese meaning the "fast lane", there was only one person and he was swimming freestyle. Since the sides of the pool where I usually go looked a bit crowded I opted for the middle lane. The other swimmer kept a steady pace and I was able to pass him about every 200m or so. After a few hundred meters another swimmer joined us, but he also swam freestyle, and when they got behind each other, I basically overtook the two in one go. That enabled me to increase the revs a bit. As my meters added up, people came and went, but generally speaking no one hindered my progress and having other people who could at least swim fairly well reminded me of masters swimming in Kona. Finally, I got up to 3,000m before I decided I just wanted to kick easy for a couple of hundred meters or so. After that I had the lane to myself and I swam 400m freestyle in exactly 7 minutes, feeling pretty relaxed the whole way, and only trying to work really hard on the last 50m. So that was an improvement. Finally, I finished with 400m using hand paddles and a moderate 100m and a cool down 50m. So it was a really good workout and one I did not expect.


After the swim I spent about 30 minutes riding my MTB easy (with a lot of spinning) around the paths that go back and forth around the sides of the Golden Lion Lake that I pass every day on my way to the pool. I was home at 9:00 am, and after my usual big bowl of muesli, I was able to get started on my work by 9:45am.


Tomorrow I will go to the pool, and see what happens when I get there. Anyway, I certainly felt good today. The swimming makes me feel relaxed, and at least I am improving.