With all the ups-and-downs, back-and-forths of Covid-19 precautions, it has been difficult to plan workouts at the pool. Currently our facility has an online schedule to grab workout times. It’s a pain in the butt. For a while during the summer when Coronavirus infections were down, you could show up at the pool during off-peak hours and get a lane no problem. Now everything is scheduled and workout blocks are being nabbed a week in advance.

Some of this is my own lack of workout discipline. I don’t really schedule times to work out. I take it as it comes. That is a response to many years of obligatory training and the sense that I was missing out if I didn’t get a workout in. That’s changed with age and my more relaxed approach to fitness.

Still, I managed to improve my swim this past summer, covering one mile in 36:00. That’s a good time for me. I did that on 1-2 swim workouts per week. The minimum that most experts recommend is three workouts a week if you want to improve endurance and speed. So it’s obvious that by putting in a bit more work, I could swim faster.

I do miss the pool. I like the feeling of getting into a groove and doing a set of 10 X 100 without thinking all that much about it. As a confessed user of wetsuit shorts, I enjoy my swim time much more these days. I’ll not apologize for that.

But it’s time to swim on over to the pool website and set aside a couple times and make the commitment. My pectoral muscles are begging for action. My shoulders want the reach and catch. My brain loves the bubbles. My lungs want to chomp on some chlorine.

See you at the pool. I never dreamed I’d be feeling this way.