Photo by richelleantipoloDuring the week, I have about 30 minutes at lunch time that I can swim and still get back to work on time. I usually swim 24-25 laps in that amount of time. It is a 25 meter pool. That means that I have been swimming 600-625 meters for each 30 minute pool session.

I realized today that my math was a bit off due to faulty assumptions. I did not think about the fact that the length of the pool is 25 meters; each lap is actually 50 meters. I have been swimming 1200-1250 meters, twice as far as I thought I had been. I am still a slow swimmer, but at least now I know that I am not nearly as slow as I thought that I was.

It is also good to realize that I can swim most of a mile without getting too tired. Should I actually get around to competing in a triathlon this year, I will not need to be nearly as frightened of the swim leg. If the swim leg is a mile in the water, I will now base my training off of the hour or less it will probably take me rather than the hour and a half to two hours I would have thought that it would take based on 600 meters taking me 30 minutes in a pool.

The moral of this story is to pay attention to the actual work that you are doing, because thinking that you went for half the time or half the distance that you thought you did can make a big difference in your assumptions and training logs.