About Swimming

I finished up the 50 times in 6 months swimming card last night. Unwilling to waste any, I swam almost everyday in recent month. Surprisingly I started with extreme hatred of it but ended with kinkda loving it.

It all began with a physical exam report, which really hurt my fat covered heart. Determined on losing some weight, while I couldn’t run because of the fasciitis in my foot. Ankle injury and soaring weight became excuse of each other these years.

That left swimming as my last option, which I really dislike:

• I hate being all wet, which could be a disease I got from my cat.
• Inefficiency. for 30 minutes of swimming it usually costs me 100 minutes totally, in things such as walking, changing clothes, and showering.
• It is so cold when I enter the pool, as if I were Jack holding on that piece of wooden plate.
• The quality of a workout is highly dependent on other people in the same lane, and more often than I like, there are too many people in the pool. It annoys me so much when a group of people chat near the end of the lane, someone swims in the very middle of the lane, or people overtake slow swimmers even when there is traffic coming ahead.
• Boredom. There is physical competition in basketball and I listen to music or podcast while running. However the only thing in my mind when I’m swimming is counting down loops or time. As a result, it is difficult to keep a long session.
• Dirtiness (in my mind). Speaking from my personal experience, there must be saliva, mucus and of course sweat of over 100 people in the water.

In my first swim here, I got a bad cramp after 200 meters, and another one for another leg after 100 more meters. Thus I had to leave, but taking off my swim suit caused cramp in both of my legs. And it was not a proper swim suit yet. I bought the largest size of swim suit avaiable, but yet it felt like a big risk of bursting while I swam. So I have been swimming with a beach short. Little by little, I regained my stamina for 800, 1000, then 2000 meters. One day, a noisy stranger told me it was not allowed to swim in any clothes except swim suits. I polited expressed “none of your business”, but I did give the swim suit another try when I got home. It fit much better. Since then I put away the beach short.

My weight went down from 108kg to 94kg after the 50 swim sessions. That is 15kg of fat dissolved in this pool of water. Probably due to smaller dimension of the body and better physical condition, I improved my 1000 meters time from 40 minutes to 26.5 minutes. Near the end, I started to feel the benefit of swimming

• It doesn’t produce as many dirty laundry as basketball or running.
• Its equipments are easy to carry, especially nice on weekdays.
• If the swimming pool is on my way home, also deducting showering time from it, it does not really cost too much extra time.
• Less showers at home save me some bathroom cleaning.

And now, I am goint to enjoy my life with a less obese body.