Having an hour and a half round trip commute, I’m trying to shave precious minutes off my various morning duties so that I can get a little more sleep.
In this spirit, I started swimming again. I can burn about the same number of calories swimming in 40 minutes as I can in about 1hr 20 when I’m on the elliptical/lifting.
I used to swim a lot. My junior year of high school, when I was in probably the best shape of my life (not to say it was particularly good, but that weight is what I’m shooting for with all this exercise), I swam a kilometer every morning before school.
I swim too fast to make that worthwhile as a weight loss program, so I go about 2/3 farther, and swim a mile, which is taking me about 37-38 minutes. There are a few things I’d forgotten, good and bad, about swimming for exercise:
- It really dries out your skin. And working in a place where you’re already ridiculously dry, this can be pretty annoying.
- You’re not covered in sweat after a good workout. I forgot how nice that is.
- Dirty old men hitting on women 40-50 years their junior at the pool. Yeah…good times. One guy in particular I’m about ready to tell to fuck off, except I think he’d like it too much.
- It uses really different muscles. In the shoulders especially. Even after a couple weeks, they’re still REALLY sore.
- People who don’t understand that when you split a lane, you have to pick a side. Otherwise you’re just going to wind up bonking into each other.
- How good it feels to break through the wall when you’re swimming. When you think you have nothing left, it feels a lot better when you’re swimming to find your reserves when it does when you’re on the elliptical. Maybe because there’s more of an illusion of movement.
- The delightful detritus at the bottom of lap pools. Lots of band-aids and sand at my gym. Yum!
Anyway, I’m at least now getting about half an hour more sleep during the week, and feeling pretty good about still getting a good amount of exercise despite it not taking as long.