Swimming - A Challengers Review Part II

 CHALLENGE  ACCOMPLISHMENT # 5

THE RESOLUTION: Swim

March 17th

While crowds began lining up at Irish pubs at 10am this St. Patrick’s Day, I dedicated myself to successfully triumphing over 3 ThirteenSquared challenges from different resolution lists. THREE of them! The first of which had me racing for the pool early enough on a Sunday morning for the 5th swimming session for ThirteenSquared. 

Then an afternoon experience of baking cupcakes and an evening spent distributing more than 50 of my own little creations (topped with green four leaf clovers :) This experience has been immortalized by the tireless April Joy Beresford in these short YouTube Films and each will soon have its own story coming to you exclusively at ThirteenSquared13.blogspot.com. For now, please enjoy these:

Part I: Baking Challenge: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAL-5NQFeYw

Part II: Random Kindness Challenge: 

http://youtu.be/aI5MbW1l77I

CHALLENGE  ACCOMPLISHMENT # 6

THE RESOLUTION: Swim

April 7th

The time has finally come to begin creating a more concrete challenge for myself in the pool. 

Step 1: Without any conscious effort to change my current swimming effort, simply count the number of laps during this one hour session. 

Result: 30 laps. 

Step 2: Make a commitment to improve the number of laps by five 25 meter lengths on the next session. 

CHALLENGE  ACCOMPLISHMENT # 7

Wishing this came in 'pool' version

THE RESOLUTION: Swim

April 14th

One of the worst side effects of the swimming challenge is the long-lasting effects of chlorine on my bathing suit, my itchy skin, and especially my hair. So when I heard that there is a salt water pool in the next town over, I jumped at the opportunity to complete my weekly swim and bypass the chemicals turning my hair into straw. 

Unfortunately, the rumors proved untrue as the pool was saturated in chemicals. Worse than that, this particular pool was much more crowded which resulted in having to share every lane with a multitude of swimmers. I ended up having to wait more time than usual between laps in order to avoid colliding with the swimmers in front of me. I’m no speed demon by any means but with the fast and medium lanes already clogged with 5 to 7 people each, the slow lane held the only available space. 

Despite these obstacles I managed to complete the 35 laps I challenged myself to in the previous blog entry. And I learned an excellent lesson: My neighbourhood pool rocks and I’m very lucky to live in a city with such great and affordable access to clean, safe and available recreation centers. 

A much preferred version of 'swimming' :P

One woman. One year. 59 down. 110 to go.