I've been getting back into the habit of going to the gym. In fact, Kim and I have both been going after work. We're generally working out with weights one day and doing cardio the next day. However, I've been going the extra mile (literally true, today). One of my co-workers (Stacey Levine) and I have been going to the gym at lunch and swimming laps. Stacey is trying to work himself back into shape to pass the swim test required to be a volunteer diver at the Georgia Aquarium. Part of the test includes having to swim 400 meters freestyle in less than 12 minutes. Today I swam 1650 meters in 40 minutes - freestyle, without stopping. This isn't the first time I reached that distance, but I've not been swimming regularly in over a year. In fact, my personal best single continuous swim was 2250 meters in 90 minutes, but I only did that once.
What really impresses me about swimming that distance is that it's longer than triathletes swim. The swim leg of a triathlon is 1500 meters (or .9 miles). A mile is 1609.344 meters. I'm going beyond that to swim 1650 meters because I swim in a 25 meter pool and kicking off the wall and just swimming an additional 9 meters after 1600 feels stupid.
Now, if only I can push myself to run a 10K (6.2 miles) and bike 40K (28.4 miels) and then put all of those together I'd enter myself in a triathlon just to be able to say I did it.
-- Matt Ranlett