Swimming Progresses to Continuous Level

Yesterday I swam constantly for about 27 minutes at my YMCA's pool. Before this I used to take short "breather" breaks between laps. I swam in the shallow section, doing freestyle in one direction and then immediately a modified backstroke in the other. I discovered that I could go on indefinitely like this, but decided to cut it off at 27 minutes because I instinctively wanted to increase my time in a more gradual manner. Next swim is tomorrow: today is a running day!

My previous conclusion about what curtails my swimming distance seems to be correct: breathing is the limiting factor. Once I get habituated to a good breathing pattern that keeps me from building up an oxygen debt, I should swim on the same endurance level as I run.

My swimming strategy is now laid out. I will alternate freestyle with backstroke at about every 12 meters or so. As my breathing during freestyle becomes more efficient, I will increase my distance in that stroke relative to the backstroke. And it matters not where I'm swimming, either: I just need to count my strokes to determine the appropriate "flipping" moment. So tomorrow I plan to take this continuous swimming strategy and apply it to the longer 25-meter lanes at the pool. And try to swim longer than yesterday.

Somewhere along the line I also intend to integrate breaststroke and, later, the butterfly into my routine. Seems now that I should just be able to practice breaststroke as short segments of my continuous workout.

Balanced Breathing in Swimming and Running

I was recently discussing with a friend my ongoing project of improving my breathing while swimming, to the point where I stop building up an oxygen debt and feel comfortable swimming for appreciably longer distances. She mentioned to me that she had previously had the same problem regarding running longer distances: she had to learn to achieve a balance with her breathing while running. I initially thought it unusual that someone might have trouble breathing while running. And then I took a walk down memory lane, back to my own childhood and my approach then to running.

When I was a kid, I ran at one speed: as fast as I could! There was no such thing as pacing myself. So when I ran, I ran all-out and soon would find myself gasping for air, having naturally incurred a great oxygen debt. It wasn't until I began to practice running longer distances in my mid-teens that I began to pace myself and establish a sort of peace between my running and my breathing. After this happened, I could run as long as I had the physical energy, barring any injury. I had figured out how to breathe while running so long ago (early 1970's) that I had at first missed the significance of my friend's remarks.

And this is the significance: even being a land creature with almost constant access to the open air, it took me several years to learn how to breathe in a sustaining way without building up oxygen debt. By contrast, I have been in water much, much less, having spent very little time or effort to balance out my "swimming" breathing. So I should feel encouraged with my progress so far, even though at times it seems like I'm just "treading water"!

Smoky Haze Looms

Being a runner, and one who doesn't confine this activity to an indoor treadmill, I have become a little concerned over the last couple of days about the explosion of brush fires, both in the Gainesville area and in northern Florida and southern Georgia in general. Not that I feel at all threatened by any fire: it is the smoky haze from them that ruins the air, making physical activity something that necessitates going indoors into air conditioning.

On my local TV news, it was reported that Gainesville and vicinity had experienced 30 such fires over the past week. Furthermore, with winds shifting to a northerly direction, those fires north of us are due to be sending their stinking haze in our direction. I experienced a few minutes of this yesterday morning, but the wind fortunately shifted again and it disappeared.

This morning I was apprehensive, wondering whether I would need to go to my YMCA and work out on the treadmill instead of my much-preferred road running through the neighborhood. But at about 10:45, I stepped outside and the air smelled clean. I ran my 7.18 mile course with ease, only limited by time restrictions. Let's see how it is on Thursday, when I'll be setting out on another run, possibly a long one (10 miles plus).

Tomorrow I have scheduled myself to swim, so I'm still going to be outside. Hopefully, my string of luck will continue and we'll avoid the haze in Gainesville. But more than anything, we need a lot of rain around here. That may sound incredible, considering the horrendous storms and flooding the southeastern U.S. has been experiencing lately.

Forget Unity from the Right Over Bin Laden

With the news about the killing of international mass-murderer Osama Bin Laden only hours old, I tuned in to my local extreme right-wing talk show radio station expecting to hear some short-term moments of national unity. You know, unity behind our president Barack Obama, who is strongly responsible for this outcome. It was the morning show with local Rush Limbaugh-wannabe Bob Rose. He was in the middle of taking calls. The first I heard was some dude angrily claiming that if it were Bush who had done this, then the "lefties" would be all over themselves criticizing him. "Rush" Rose said nothing for or against this comment. The next call-in was someone espousing the view that, a-ha, NOW he knows why Obama just went to the trouble to release his birth certificate. To which Rose should have replied, "WTF are you talking about, you irrational, crazy moron?" But he let that caller also go without any correction. These folks, after all, represent Rose's listening base of frightened, liberal-hating ideologues and he knows where his paycheck comes from. Finally, the esteemed local host took a minute away from the phones to make a statement to the effect that some of the previous callers should realize that this is a time of unity for the country as a whole and they don't need to be overcritical. Then he immediately pondered about GITMO, how information leading to the location of Bin Laden's hangout may have been obtained there from detainees, and oh by the way, didn't Obama and his liberal buddies want to close it down? All this almost in one breath.

So I see little hope for anything resembling the national unity expressed for President Bush immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, I have a prediction: in the ensuing days, a conspiracy theory will develop, probably viewable on YouTube and passed around on "hate" radio and FoxHateNews: it was all faked, Obama knew he needed to "get" Bin Laden to be reelected and made a deal with him to "disappear" in exchange for his faked killing. After all, he had been living right there all along among the Pakistani military, our allies. And didn't they get rid of that body pretty conveniently fast? I further predict that at least one of the GOP presidential hopefuls will embrace this nutty fabrication and actually gain traction over it with the party's "base".

You should be able to see this coming: too many people utterly despise our president and will never credit him with doing anything good...

******

... I see tonight's Colbert Report ripped off my short-but-sweet article from yesterday. Now where's my lawyer....

After Ten Years...

Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead.

Finally.

Too Many Books Adhering to Murder Formula

I was walking through my local Books-a-Million the other day, wondering how all of these successful general-fiction writers come up with successful story plot lines. I entered one of the aisles, looked around to make sure that there wasn't anyone I might accidentally bump into or trip over (many B-a-M customers like to sit on the floor), and closed my eyes. And then reached over to my right and pulled out the first book I touched. It was about a serial killer. Placing it back on the shelf, I then walked down a couple of steps and repeated myself. So did the book I picked: another serial killer story.

I stopped the experiment and began to examine book after book. No, I wasn't in the mystery section, but most of the books had as their premise a murderer on the loose. And then it hit me: books are marketed nowadays according to formulae similar to how popular music is marketed and played on broadcast radio. And instead of the diversity of stories that should be available, we end up getting a relatively sparse number of very successful authors churning out minor variations of their own (and each other's) works, much like the annoying homogeneity of crap being passed as music on broadcast radio. Yuck...

So I wonder how many aspiring writers have eschewed the overworked serial murderer story line and tried writing material of a more offbeat nature, resulting in their stories either never being published or suffering poor promotion leading to their lack of exposure in major book outlets.

Maybe I should write a parody of these tedious and ultimately boring serial killer books, but try to sell it as a serious work and see what happens. A kind of literary Spinal Tap, if you will...

Boda Real is Real Bull

Let's be clear about this: I am an American. And if there's one thing that is clearly positive about my heritage as an American, it is that my country was founded as a republic, divorced from the curse of royalty. Places with kings, queens, princes, princesses, czars, sultans, emperors,... however you may designate them, are plagued with essentially worthless people who inherit shameless amounts of wealth and have completely unmerited power to influence events in their countries. It is true that in today's world, most royalty is chiefly ceremonial and symbolic. But a lot of the reason for this change has been bloody revolts and wars against autocratic royal despots in the past. And to think that people are getting all excited and teary-eyed about a prince marrying his girlfriend in England? Unbelievable!

What makes things even worse are two buried news stories occurring at the same general time as this ludicrous event. Three hundred people, i.e. American people, have violently perished at the hands of an historic storm system that unleashed hundreds of tornadoes on heavily populated areas, chiefly in northern Alabama. And another historic event, the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavor, with its very important cargo for studying the basic nature of the universe, was slated for Friday (but postponed for at least two days due to last-minute technical problems). But no, let's push these stories to the background, dress our journalists and announcers in ridiculous costumes, and fly them overseas for non-stop coverage of this non-event!

What I think is also funny (or sad, depending on how you look at it) is how even much more engrossed in the British "boda real" my Spanish-language television station Univision has been, apparently in response to its viewing audience. This floors me, especially considering that for most of the Latin American countries, their struggle for independence from hegemonistic European royalty was even more traumatic than was the Americans' struggle against the British during the Revolutionary War.

But I suppose that part of this fascination with today's wedding stems from our childhood memories of so many stories revolving around royalty. So instead of being realistic about how parasitic on society the REAL royalty is, we impose our fantasy visions on these basically common, ordinary people and elevate them to an undeserving status.

Ten-Mile Run Ahead of Killer Storm

Well, maybe I'm being a little melodramatic. But I did run ten miles late this morning, and it WAS ahead of a massive frontal storm system that, at last report, is responsible for at least 170 deaths throughout the southeastern U.S.. The front seems to have dipped to the northern fringe of Florida, just missing Gainesville. But some spinoff storms still cut through the area later today (but not anything like the devastation visited elsewhere, especially Alabama). Ironically, it was this front that largely helped me to reach ten miles by providing welcome shade with clouds leading ahead of it. And it never rained during the run, although a few sprinkles probably would have enhanced it.

The run was done under generally unpleasant weather conditions: the temperature ranged from 78 degrees at the start to 86 at the end. Humidity dropped during the run from a sticky 74% to a more manageable 63%.

My ten-mile run time was 1:36:40, reflecting my stubbornly predictable and comfortable long-distance running pace.

It certainly does raise my spirits to be able to return to a regular running routine. Once again, there was no hint throughout this workout that I had ever suffered any injury. Hooray! But that personal encouragement is tempered with the sadness over this terrible storm system's casualties.

Is Kobe the Best Right Now?

I was listening earlier today to a sports talk show on the radio (I think it was ESPN). The question being discussed was who the best player in basketball is right now. The announcers settled on Kobe Bryant. One of them pointed out that, in last night's playoff game against New Orleans, Bryant made a couple of stunning plays to the basket that only he could make. And he was supposedly nursing an ankle injury!

Well, apparently there wasn't any ankle injury and Bryant had been using it as an excuse for his lackluster play against the Hornets so far. Then last night, in the second quarter (after a very slow first quarter), he suddenly "made his statement" and his Los Angeles Lakers won to take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series. But does that show him to be the best player right now?

Remember, the announcers were referring to the present and not to the span of a player's career. Kobe Bryant has a solid claim to a "career best player" for his impressive total of NBA championship rings. But his performance lately has been spotty and erratic, to say the least. For me, I place much greater store in consistent greatness. Chicago's Derrick Rose and Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, by that standard, have shown themselves to be much greater than Kobe Bryant. Right now.

Kobe Bryant, like Miami's Lebron James, has enormous talent, talent which at times is breathtaking. But much of the time in a game, at least as I see it, both of these superstar athletes simply won't play up to the level that they are capable of. It creates frustration for their teams' fans as they wonder when, if ever, their hero is finally going to get himself in the mood to "turn it on" in a game. For me, I come away from the experience with a feeling of having been manipulated somehow. I certainly wouldn't elevate someone like this to the title of "best".

Is My Injury Recovery Complete?

On March 22, I began to experience some familiar pain from my January IT band injury (in my right leg just below the knee) while on a neighborhood run, around the four-mile mark. I prudently laid off running for a weak to aid in my healing. Since then...

Starting on March 29 and including today, I have run on ten different occasions and amassed 57.5 miles. No pain! Today was a breakthrough of sorts: I ran on the road around my neighborhood for 8.15 miles (time 1:15:12) and only ended my run because, frankly, I had fallen out of shape due to resting from the injury and was too tired to continue (and it was hot and humid to boot). But no pain in the injured area.

So have I fully recovered? I might as well act as if I have, since it will probably take some time to gradually build my distance back up to the level I had previously enjoyed. But with several recent runs of over seven miles, I am already in the lower mileage level of the area I want to get to! I would just like to add a longer run, around 13-14 miles, once a week, and I will be content with running again.

Yes, I don't think it will be long before I am participating again in various community road races. Unfortunately, with the oncoming hot summer, they may be few and far between.

Final Endeavor Mission Slated For Friday Liftoff

The space shuttle program is winding down as another shuttle, Endeavor, is scheduled for its final launch this Friday. There is so little popular interest in our space program anymore that it probably would have been largely ignored by the media were it not for the human interest angle with astronaut Mark Kelly being on of the crew. Kelly is the husband of recently-shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who apparently will be able to watch the launch.

It is a shame that so many care little or nothing about space exploration. To me, it represents the future of science and carries enormous significance for our ability to maintain our fragile Earth's ability to sustain life. But public apathy has instead allowed NASA, the federal agency charged with the responsibility of setting our goals and implementing them, to escape the needed scrutiny it needs to avoid slipping into a weighted-down bureaucracy instead of a dynamic, tightly managed organization with clear and ambitious missions.

When our last president presented his plan to go back to the moon and set up a permanent base there, the press reacted to it as if it were just a lame, fill-in news story. Soon after Bush laid out his vision, the story quickly died.

Space travel has little political traction with the ideological polarization currently intensifying in our country. The political right sees anything to do with the government as being inherently evil (unless it involves increasing discrimination against minorities and the poor, depriving women of reproductive freedom, promoting one particular religious worldview over others, or funding the military to ridiculous levels). The political left, on the other hand, seems to delight in negatively comparing public spending on space exploration to entitlement programs that it would like to see strengthened (the old "we can send a man to the moon but we won't help the poor" argument).

Hopefully, private industry will step in and help to revitalize space exploration. But don't expect a lot of media coverage on this. After all, the commercial news media of today is more interested in anticipating public interest for its stories, not creating it. Too bad.

Annoying Late Night for Me

Sometimes work can be a bit stressful toward the end of my shift, approaching 11 PM. After I get off from work, I would like to find a relatively quiet public place to unwind with a little decaf coffee and then go home. Try finding such a place in Gainesville, though! Still, I'm making it a kind of quest: surely there is someplace that isn't too loud, excessively lit, full of obnoxious people, and serves coffee that time of night...

The other night after a particularly stress-inducing shift, I went to my local 24-hour Krispy Kreme to find some solace and coffee. Mistake. There was a long line of customers as I entered, so I sat down and waited, pulling out a notebook to read. Only I couldn't read, everyone was so loud. And argumentative. It seems that some of the customers were irate because the red "hot doughnuts" sign wasn't on yet, and they wanted their doughnuts HOT, dammit. Then the comatose-looking attendant behind the counter asked a woman customer what she wanted, to which she replied a dozen glazed. This angered another customer, who had already ordered and was waiting for his dozen glazed doughnuts (are you beginning to see how irrational these people were). The woman actually apologized to the man for her order, probably realizing what a nutcase he was. All this and a myriad other conversations seemed to be amplified by the place's acoustics. And the lighting there would befit an interrogation room. Well, I eased on out of that joint and wrote off my experience as a lesson learned...

Maybe tonight I'll try one of those all-night restaurants where they expect you to order complete meals (like at IHOP or Perkins). Then I'll just sit there like the goth kids on South Park, annoying the servers by ordering only coffee and sitting there glued to the seat!

Annoying Day for Me

Today was one of those interesting days I could do without, for the most part. For most of the morning, after I drove my daughter to school, I was too tired to do anything but sleep. So I slept in. Finally, at the last minute I decided to try another seven-mile run around the neighborhood. By then the temperature had climbed to the mid-eighties outside, making the run somewhat grueling. But I completed it nonetheless and was quite self-congratulatory as I walked back up to my front door, keys in hand. Only I had the wrong set of keys; my house key was locked up inside the house. With nobody home inside this time of day, I had to spend the next twenty minutes creeping around the house trying to find a way to break in. Finally, just about when I had given up hope, I found a way. But then I thought this is a security problem. If I could get in this way, then an intruder could as well. So I fixed that breach, making the next time I lock myself out of my house an assured disaster!

I had just enough time to wash up and get ready for work. But right after I started my car, it instantly died on me, completely. Great, now I was going to be late for work and who knows what was wrong with the car. After getting on the phone with my auto repairman, he suggested that I tighten the battery connections. Sure enough, when I did that the power came back on and I was only a few minutes late for work.

Even after that, the day dragged on and I felt sluggish and weak. Usually after a good run I am pretty sharp, so I wondered why. And then it hit me: I hadn't had any coffee all day! At my first break at 4:30, I drank a big cup and everything improved from then on.

It's interesting how predicaments like locking oneself out of the house or having the car inexplicably shut down can seem so catastrophic while they are going on. But looking back from my perspective just a few hours later, it all now seems rather trivial, not to mention funny!

Swimming and Breathing

Sunday at the mega-used-book sale here in Gainesville I spent 50 cents on a swimming guide. It gave some tips for how to breathe while swimming. One was to practice breathing in the water by standing in place with the water at about shoulder level. Quickly inhale through the mouth and then dip under water by bending the knees. Slowly exhale through the nose and then briefly emerge to inhale again. Keep repeating indefinitely, if you can. For if you can do this without building up an oxygen debt or starting to gasp for air, then you have a working model for breathing while swimming. Or at least that's what the book implies.

In practice, it is different to do this while swimming. I am thinking about a lot of things besides breathing. I am balancing my body and concentrating on how I am positioning my arms, torso, and legs at any given moment. Most of the time (when I am swimming freestyle) my head is under water, so naturally I have to delay my breathing until my stroke is at the stage where my head is momentarily turned sideways out of the water. So the bobbing practice pushed in the book is helpful, but not entirely adequate.

Today I worked on my breathing at the pool, and it continues to be a work in progress. But I did learn something very significant today: I don't really tire much while swimming. My rest periods between laps are almost entirely because I am catching my breath, not because of any energy drain. And that gives me hope, because I am shortening those rest intervals with each time I go to the pool.

Enjoying NBA Playoffs

I'm enjoying the National Basketball Association playoffs this year immensely. There have been some unexpectedly close games and some upsets as well. New York-Boston, Indiana-Chicago, Atlanta-Orlando, Philadelphia-Miami, Los Angeles-New Orleans, San Antonio-Memphis, Denver-Oklahoma City, and Dallas-Portland (the game I am currently watching) have all had competitive, interesting games (well, except for the latest Philadelphia-Miami game). The favorites have usually won, but even then the games have generally been tense and close, going down to the final minute in most cases.

I love this time of the year. NBA playoffs are a great source of entertainment for me. It's funny seeing how some players get traded from one team to another but somehow seem to be in the playoff picture every year!

This year I like Boston in the Eastern Conference and San Antonio in the West. The teams I am absolutely opposed to are Miami in the East and Oklahoma City in the West. My aversion to the Oklahoma City Thunder is probably irrational as I had always liked the franchise's previous location and name: the Seattle Supersonics. Oh well, at least they had enough sense to change the nickname when they moved, unlike the ridiculous Utah Jazz (formerly of New Orleans) and the even more ridiculous Memphis Grizzlies (formerly of Vancouver).

Ditto to Karl Rove (This Time)

Karl Rove and I are seeing eye-to-eye, and that bothers me. For years I had regarded him as one of the chief culprits responsible for George W. Bush's shift to an ideological, right-wing presidency after initially running in 2000 as a moderate who could unite the country behind him (as he successfully had done with Texas as its governor). It was Bush's stubbornness during the initial months of 2001 in refusing to work with the Democrats in Congress that led me to switch my party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. So Rove is not exactly on my list of most-admired.

But Karl Rove has lately been quite vocal in his denunciation of new presidential hopeful Donald Trump, even calling him a "joke candidate". Why? Because Trump, who could have run strongly on his credentials as a very successful businessman qualified to take on the nation's economic problems as president, instead decided to go off the deep end and focus on Obama's birthplace, siding with the fringe "birther" movement that claims the current president to be illegally in office because he was supposedly born abroad and not in Hawaii. I initially had welcomed Trump's entry into the race until he showed that, beyond his business acumen, he was nuttier than a fruitcake.

But even setting aside the Trump nonsense, I find myself agreeing somewhat with Karl Rove, who wants there to be a field of stronger GOP candidates than there is right now. When November 2012 comes around, I want to have a choice between two candidates, either of whom I feel confident to be qualified to take over the reins of power in 2013. The last thing I want is for some simplistic demagogue to make it into office by repeating Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh's talking points. But except for Mitt Romney (who at least has a record in office of being reasonable, although he now is understandably trying to ingratiate himself with the party's right wing), I see no one who doesn't fit this description.

I don't think that Mr. Rove wants the Republicans to nominate political bomb-throwers like Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, or Michelle Bachmann for the simple reason that their nomination would almost automatically guarantee Obama a second term. Rove wants the GOP to unite early in the campaign around a strong candidate who can win over independent and moderate voters, something crucial for their election in 2012. Instead, the Republicans may end up crippled with extremist teabaggers rejecting any moderation during the primary season and nominating a nutcase to run against Obama in the general election. Neither Rove nor I want this to happen.

Friends of the Library Sale: My Visit

Today Melissa and I went to the semi-annual Alachua County Friends of the Library book sale. This is a major event in Gainesville, and it draws many people to a warehouse located just north of downtown, a warehouse loaded to the hilt with books of (almost) all types. There are also many used CDs, audio cassettes, vinyl records, DVDs, and VHS tapes. The sale began yesterday and will conclude on Wednesday. Melissa bought a few books and I bought a couple (an elementary school Chinese story reader (in Chinese) and a book explaining swimming techniques and strategies). Since more books are added to the shelves each day, it might behoove me to pay a return visit there Tuesday or Wednesday.

The crowds there didn't bother me at all, but then again I wasn't really passionately searching for specific titles. So if there was an area that was overcongested, I just went to the next that wasn't. Besides, looking for specific books can be a little nerve-wracking even without having to deal with others competing for browsing space: other than areas specified by genre, books are shelved in no particular order, so one must look at each book to cover an area. That's too much of a hassle for me.

As I walked through the warehouse, I wondered how many of the out-of-print books on sale there would ever make it to electronic media like Kindle or The Nook. And would the prices of these books be such that the same folks who visit this massive used book sale be willing to buy them?

Bonds Guilty Verdict Baffling

I'm reading Thursday's news report of the verdict in the Barry Bonds perjury trial: guilty on one count, mistrials in the other three. The conviction wasn't for any perjury charge, though: Bonds is supposedly guilty of "obstructing justice" because he digressed and appeared "evasive" in his statements to the grand jury probing allegations that Bonds had purposefully taken injections of steroids and human growth hormone to boost his baseball performance. Uh-h-h, say that again?!

Bonds appeared in person as a "witness" before the grand jury, which in fact was there for one primary reason: to determine whether charges should be leveled at various alleged participants in the baseball doping scandal, Bonds himself one of them. I personally don't dig the idea that grand juries or congressional committees can subpoena people whom they know all along are the actual suspects of their investigations and then give them the third degree on the stand, probing and probing until they can catch them in some sort of contradiction. Then, in this "gotcha" game of theirs, they forget the original "crime" and level perjury charges against the witness. Only with Bonds, he wasn't convicted of perjury: it was for supplying information about his childhood and his friendship with personal trainer Greg Anderson, who has been tainted in the investigation. This information apparently didn't contribute much to the jury's knowledge about the case, but does that really constitute "obstruction of justice"? After all, Bonds was there in person. Anyone could have pressed him as much as they would have liked about any matter that they though was pertinent. The idea of a grand jury being incapable of doing this because they are not versed in legal intricacies is invalid: they have the power to recommend prosecution!

If being evasive when asked a question is a crime, then let's just go ahead and arrest all of our elected officials for the same thing every time one of them dodges a difficult question that a reporter poses to them. Or take me: once in my tenth grade English class I wrote a short, rambling paper off the top of my head summarizing a book that I never read and knew very little about, receiving my school's equivalent of a "B" grade on this assignment. Talk about an evasive narrative! Time to haul out the handcuffs and slap 'em on me, coppers!

My Kick-Ass 7-Mile Injury Recovery Run

Today I was more encouraged than ever about my recovery from the running injury to my right leg that hit me three months ago. This time I ran 7.18 miles around my neighborhood, experiencing no pain in the previously injured area just below my right knee. Now I am beginning to return to my running "comfort zone", having workouts of distances substantial enough to have the positive effects on my mind and body that I enjoyed so much last year. Never mind that the temperatures during the run were warm (78-81 degrees) or that I was tired and sweaty afterwards: this was a great triumph for me!

The 7.18 mile distance is the longest I have run pain-free since January 15, when I ran 26.6 miles. My time on today's run was typical for me, reflecting my habitual running pace: 1:08:04.

My ultimate goals with running are twofold:

(1) Return to a regimen of runs 3-4 times per week, with the distances ranging from 7 to 14 miles per run.

(2) Participate in half-marathons (13.1 miles) from now on (or in shorter-distance events).

And of course, as mentioned before, I also want to make swimming co-equal with running as an athletic activity. But if you read yesterday's article, you can see that I still have a long way to go before this is achieved.

Swimming Compared to Running

Let me get this out first:

#1: I really, really, really want to become a good swimmer.
#2: I really, really, really want swimming to be an athletic activity of mine on an equal status as running.

and...

#3: I really, really, really am starting to see how this may not be at all feasible.

It all comes down to the sad fact that I am neither a dolphin nor a fish, so alas, I must create (or use some other party's creation of) an artificial environment in which I can temporarily depart from my naturally evolved tendencies as a land animal and "take the plunge'. If you're already lost, that just simply means that, to swim, I need first to find a pool to swim in!

Well, it just so happens that I already am a member in a pool-bearing YMCA, conveniently only a mile from my home. The only problem is that a lot of other folks like my YMCA's pool and want to use it, and not just for swimming laps. We have various swim teams, swimming classes, scuba diving classes, water aerobics, fitness groups, and of course, individual members in increasing numbers as the temperatures warm and the thought of a pool excursion becomes more and more attractive. And then there are the lap-swimmers, most of whom I am totally in awe regarding their ability to "do it", i.e. go back and forth across the 25-meter lanes without pausing, over and over again, no matter their age or apparent level of fitness. In spite of my near-adulation of these seasoned swimmers, they do represent a problem in that whenever I want to go swimming, I have to work around them.

Now let's look at running. Presuming that I am able to run, I can freaking run anywhere I want to, due to that now-fortunate fact that I am a land animal! And there is no premium on space with running: I can run even if there is a horde of runners going down the street! And there is no time limit either; I don't have to adjust my schedule to the select hours that the street is open, as is the case with the swimming pool.

I can run indoors at the YMCA on one of their treadmills, I can run down the streets of my neighborhood, I can run on a nearby track, I can run in my back yard, I can run through my house, ... hell, I can even just run in place! But if I want to swim, then I have to find somewhere to do that. And that ain't always so easy!

I have to hand it to my local YMCA: they have been good to swimmers, keeping their pool open throughout the winter as they have done. But they only have so much room in the pool, and there is already too much demand for access to it. I can only see this problem worsening as the season progresses through spring and into summer. There are other pools in Gainesville: one in the northeast section and the Westside Park pool, which for reasons only they know won't open this year until next month. So as it stands now, it is a hit-or-miss proposition whenever I prepare to go swimming as to whether I will actually have an available lane to swim in when I get there.

But not with running. I can just step outside my front door and go tearing down the road. It doesn't matter what else is going on: if it's storming outside I can go to that same YMCA and run on one of their many available treadmills...or as I said before I could even just run in place in my living room... while watching TV! Try swimming at home (without a swimming pool). Sorry, but the bathtub just doesn't cut it!

So availability really drastically separates swimming from running for me, even in a generally warm-weather state like Florida. There is also another difference between the two forms of physical activity...

When I have just finished a hot, sweaty, and tiring run, I feel like taking a shower, for sure. But just the same, the act of running makes me feel like I have somehow cleansed my body of toxins. But after a session in the pool swimming, I have the opposite feeling: I feel contaminated by the chlorine and god-knows-what-else was in the pool and--quick, get me into the shower and wash it all off!