Quick Update on Start of the Week

This is just a quick one. This morning I got down the pool and started swimming at 6:35 am. I got 3,500 meters done by 8:00 am when the pool "closed" for the rest of the morning. The distance may sound good, but it was generally boring, uneventful swimming. The first 2,500m or so I had to occasionally swerve to avoid a head-on collision with other swimmers in the fairly busy pool. With my cold still lingering, I did not feel too keen to go really hard on any swims, even short ones. As the pool began to have fewer people with about 20 minutes to go, I got the hand paddles out and did about 500m continuously with them.
I don't know whether all this swimming is going to make me any better, as many workouts others do that I read about are usually full of gut-wrenching sprints using all four strokes at Olympic level send-offs. Still, I guess I'd better not try to get into all that too quickly. At least I am not feeling much muscular discomfort at present.
In the future, if I want to significantly increase my daily distance, I will need to go to the pool twice a day. It is not that the swimming takes such a long time to do, but the issue is whether I am sufficiently awake to actually get some work done during the rest of the day.
I rode about 5 miles this morning, for apart from going to and from the pool, I also went to a large supermarket to buy some things. That seems to be the limit of my biking at present.