Yesterday, I counted laps. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, the whole length of the pool, and 2, 2, 2, 2, coming back. It was a boring thing to think, and it was nevertheless also hard not to lose track.
Today, I used a poem I happen to have already memorized, and I thought one word for the length of the pool and advanced to the next word for the next length and so on. I never lost track of where I was, and I found it very interesting to isolate a single word and roll it over and over in my head as I swam a length. I got many new ideas about the poem and the words of the poem mixed nicely with moving along through the water.
Did I get a “workout”? — you might ask, but I don’t, other than to imagine another person pushing me on that score. I’m just looking for pleasurable, stimulating things to do with my mind and body. For that, the one-word-per-lap/memorized poem approach was fantastic!
Why had I never thought of this before? I don’t know, but I got snagged by computer problems this morning. It slowed me down but also got me thinking laterally. Sometimes when you can’t go galumphing along in your usual way, you stand around awhile and see another avenue.
September 28, 2019
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I never had trouble keeping track of laps in a pool or laps on a track. For running, though, I rarely did it on a track- for me I always had 3 or 4 routes that covered the same distance (6.5 miles), and just ran them alternately checking the time at the end.
When I was post doc, I got into poetry in a big way for a couple of years and started memorizing poems. I did often, at that time, recite them quietly to myself while I was running or just working out with weights. I have never liked listening to music on headphones while working out, though I don't mind it playing over speakers in the gym.
You swim? you don't look like the type. I find swimming boring - there's no external stimulation, your head is in water. A bucket of chlorine water, and your limbs are flailing about. Compare it to walking. Out in the fresh air, the weather, the scenery, the people, etc. you can put in a talking book or music. Plus there's all the showering and "Hey, let me drive to the nearest pool" that goes with swimming. Walking? You just leave your house and you start doing it. You shower once, when you get back.
Swimming in the ocean, with the currents and waves (little miss tuffett), is more interesting. but then you run into the shark problem.
Plus, you need an ocean. And those things can be expensive.
That is so apropos, and very clever.
I swim only 40 laps (approximately) 3 times/week, but am constantly losing my count. I wouldn't ever dare to think about the lap I am on while in the middle of one - that would be painfully annoying (I certainly don't ever want to focus on my stroke mechanics). Instead, I let my mind drift to thinking about other things (work/life problems, politics, philosophy, relationships), and then try to increment the lap count at each turn. But this is far from foolproof, and I am frequently just picking a number I know to be pretty close. I'd guess my standard error over time is 4 laps (and probably skewed negative - oh well).
Our host's algorithm might actually work for me, but it wouldn't be poetry. I'd need to pick some memorable prose, and probably non-fiction. Maybe the Declaration of Independence - if I removed all articles and prepositions, the opening sentence would be 40 words!
"...you can't go galumphing along..." So the poem was Jabberwocky?
I will try this. Thank you.
@Yancy
What poems did you memorize?
Laps are hard. Esp when you're an awkward swimmer like me. In HS swimming I sank like a rock.
I seem to float better now for some reason...
I miss lap swimming. Used to live near multiple pools with Master's swims (not that I ever competed). Now - nuthin. The experience depends a lot on how polite your fellow lane swimmers are.
I had a routine written on a card - would have to look at it once every segement was completed. Despise having to memorize anything; it is intruiging that others find pleasure in it while I find it so off putting.
So was it a Jabberwocky swim, or more like a Prufrock swim?
I don't float!
Is there anything to help?: buoyancy suit?
Advise please.
Here's what you need to do Ann to keep track of your laps and get a healthier workout. On laps (lengths) ending in a 5 or 0, do the breast stroke. On all other laps do the crawl. This way your body will sort of remember where you are from the last breast stroke lap. You Will remember how many laps since the last breast stroke. Counting will become sort of automatic once you get into the routine. This will also protect you from over use injury and give you a more balanced workout using more muscles.
Many men, I hear, just think about baseball.
Going through the Brewers’ 25-man roster four times gets you to 100.
Yelich.
Yelich.
Yelich.
Yelich.
I swim about a hundred days per year, not counting dips in the lake or gulf. It’s stimulating on many levels; almost primal. I’m always sharper after hitting the pool.
I swim 2 miles everyday (except Sunday). Most workouts are with a Masters swimming group. Swimming with other people — especially one’s lane mates — makes it ever so much easier to get through a workout. When I swim alone, I typically forget about yardage or distance, but rather swim for duration, that is, I look at the pace clock and go for 50-60 minutes. That frees my mind up to ignore lap counting and to think about other things. Give it a try!
Garner.
Garner.
Garner.
Garner.
Garner.
Badger.
Badger.
Badger.
That's a good idea. I don't swim, but I'll try it when I'm doing reps with my senior citizen weights, where I often lose count.
I don't want to underdo a set, or much worse, overdo one.
I swim laps every evening. I time 3 laps, I swim for an hour and divide the 3 lap time into 60 minutes. That gives me about 45 laps. I don't count laps.
I have a waterproof MP3 setup and listen to Econtalk or another podcast. That solves the boring problem. We live in an active adult community in AZ that has 13 pools so I am usually alone.
Swimming thoughts: redheads, blondes , brunettes in swimsuits like doing a radar sweep. Those were the good old days. Counting laps is just rational. Counting prey is more archetypal.
Wear a waterproof watch. Decide to swim for X number of minutes. Check watch. No lap counting necessary. Repeat:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Or Xanadon't.
If you only do four laps, it's easy enough to keep track, but Dr. Seuss has some helpful poems if needs arise.
Althouse said...
"How I swam 100 laps today and only 20 yesterday."
For the record, I wish to be referred to by my preferred participle, swum.
What a good idea. I'm using it tomorrow. Thanks!
"see another avenue."
Sounds like travel is involved.
Now just do it for The Lays of Ancient Rome and you'll be ready for the Olympics...
My timing mantra, as a fallen-away Catholic, is the Hail Mary. There's a rhythmic break in the middle, with "thy womb Jesus", then a hurry-up to bring it home with "now and in the hour of our death, amen". I will probably fry in Hell for this.
I took the lane less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
I can handle the boredom (though I will try Ann's trick next time I do laps), its the New Years' Resolute crowd that gets me out of the pool.
Emily Dickinson- several dozen of the better known ones. A couple of odes by Keats, three poems of Yeats, several of Shakespeare's sonnets, a couple of dozen Sylvia Plath's poems from Ariel, a Philip Larkin, a couple of Dylan Thomas poems, two Wallace Stevens, and several miscellaneous poems that I really like, including The Raven by Poe, and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by Eliot, and others I can't bring to mind right at this moment. The miscellaneous stuff I got right out of Norton's anthology that I stole from my sister (borrowed, never returned)
I don't recite them to myself any longer more than occasionally, but I still can recite from memory around 20 or so of them- especially the very more famous of the Dickinson (Because I Could Not Stop For Death, Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers, After Great Pain etc) and few others- "The Second Coming", "The Snow Man", "The Emperor of Ice Cream", and "Do Not Go Gently", "Lady Lazarus", "Daddy", "Thalidomide" and still "The Raven" (which I had memorized in grade school).
I spent the day setting up a second antenna, to cancel out power line insulator noise that's just come up on shortwave. That gets combined with received power from the original antenna with adjustable amplitude and phase so that anything from the power line noise's direction is nulled to zero.
It's always amazing when that works. Poof, hash disappears with the right knob settings.
I needed to scrounge up a preamplifier also to being the second (smaller) antenna's level up to equal the original antennas, and additional bits of coax to connect everything.
If you want to waste your day in a pool, that's okay too. It sounds pretty boring though.
If you bike to the store, the miles count themselves. You can think about other things. Listen to morse code off the mp3 player. I've got Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations saved on that.
And, as I read the comments, also the Coleridge rcocean cited. I tried to memorize "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," too, but I never fully did so, and soon stopped trying to memorize poems.
Personally,open water swimming lends itself to more meanderings of the mind than pool swimming: no lanes, no turns, just swim. In the pool (3-5 times per week with a Masters team), it's about the send-off, the set, ergo, the counting and pacing, especially if one is the 'lane leader.' Poetry in the early morning before work is often elusive.
I started swimming 18 months ago after I was diagnosed with spondylolisthesis (vertebral slippage). I had terrible sciatic pain in one leg as well. My doctor proposed surgery but I opted for PT and pain management -- mostly icing and lots of ibuprofen. Swimming was the only exercise that made me feel better and luckily I have ready access to a pool; it's outdoors and maintained at 80 degrees year round. I also bike 15 miles 4 days per week. After just a few months, my sciatic pain completely resolved. Loosing 40 pounds also helped. I am for the most part pain-free and off ibuprofen and all meds.
As for lap counting, it got easier with practice. I still lose count occasionally. I don't really think during laps - I focus on my own technique, trying to get more efficient. I recently started timing myself using a little hourglass with colored sand and swimming for specified time. It's easy for me to see from distance if you have sand left in the clock. I don't like wearing watches.
I taught my 3rd graders to love poetry and got them to memorize over 30 poems a year with no homework, no test, no pressure, no requirement to participate (they all did). We learned all sorts of poems including "Jabberwocky", and at the same time vocabulary, information, poetry basics, lyrical language, and more. Then they began writing some pretty advanced poetry. It was wonderful because after about the 3rd year I began to learn some by heart as well. I had a dental procedure done and recited poetry silently to make the time go by. It really helped. It was a wonderful thing to watch and develop this program. I am very interested in your approach of one word per lap. I am not a lap swimmer, but I have recited enough poetry to know that the more times you say it, the more you learn and the more you focus on each word. Terrific idea!!! Wondering if "Jabberwocky" was your poem.
I count 1, 1, 1, 1 then 2 etc. on the way back. I start over again after 20. I almost never get off count, as you have can quickly tell if you forgot to count a length. Somedays I do swear it was 3 sets of 20 after swimming 2 sets. It's exercise, but not much of a work out. It's easier on my body and joints. I just mindlessly swim 2000 meters with ease.
I've been reading Althouse just about every day for some 15 years and had no idea that she was a swimmer. I have, at various times in my life swum laps, but only when it was too cold to swim outside in natural bodies of water. There were two reasons to prefer lakes and ponds: 1. They are so long that I don't have to count laps, for instance, I would swim across Walden Pond and back, done! 2. Chlorine hurts my eyes and I can't seem to keep goggles from leaking over the course of a mile or so.
Forget the number of laps for awhile. You might relax more if you went for a timed swim for laps - 15 minutes, 20, 30 or more. You can speed up your heart rate in intervals by varying your speed. Slow down when you need to catch your breath. Occupy your mind with something other than a count or a poem-word ritual.
If you are not worried about getting a workout, why were you counting laps to begin with?, another person might ask, pushing you on that score.
From 20 to 100 in one day! That's a fivefold multiplier. At this rate, professor,tomorrow you will swim 500 laps.
"From 20 to 100 in one day! That's a fivefold multiplier. At this rate, professor,tomorrow you will swim 500 laps."
She is training to swim to Europe for a climate conference.
Good morning, Althouse. First, count in yards. A standard American Short Course pool is 25-yards long, therefore 4-lengths is 100-yards. Second, don't swim continuously. Start off with an easy 200 free, rest 30-seconds and an easy 200 breast. Rest one minute. Next, do 10 x 50 free with 10 seconds rest between. Rest one minute. Next do 10 x 100 free with 15-seconds rest between. Rest 2-minutes. End with an easy 200 free, rest 1-minute and an easy 200 breast.
This is about 1-mile.
Number 1 reason to prefer walking to swimming laps in a pool- They won't let my dog come with me into the pool. She loves to swim with me in our pond so it's not fair she can't go in a public pool. Unfortunately, our climate limits the number of weeks we can swim together outside. I could put a pool in our backyard, but even heated, it would be unusable most of the year. But we can walk together 52 weeks of the year. And we can bring along other friends, both human and canine. I'm guessing Professor Althouse is a bit of an introvert.
I count by airplanes:
A-1 Skyraider
A-2 Savage
A-3 Skywarrior
A-4 Skyhawk
etc., etc.
rhhardin: "That gets combined with received power from the original antenna with adjustable amplitude and phase so that anything from the power line noise's direction is nulled to zero."
Active noise cancellation-- with you in the middle of the control loop. That counts as activity in my book. Who needs a pool?
Another vote for timimg rather than lap counting. I learned while running every day that since your pace is your pace and you can easily figure it out, counting by time is the same thing as counting by distance and much easier. Plus you are free to let your mind wander which is one of the best things about endurance exercise.
And for cardiovascular exercise of any kind, the amount of time you put in is by far the most important variable. 40 minutes at a given pace is not quite twice as good as 20, but it’s in the neighborhood (beyond that the “twice as long is twice as beneficial” concept falls off and you risk more overuse injuries etc). Whether your pace is slow, medium, or fast is less important than the time you spend doing it, up to 45-50 minutes 4-6x per week.
I definitely get how different ways of measuring “work done” appeal to different people.
Counting by laps or distance seems to be the default even though it’s more difficult and not that useful or meaningful for endurance exercise.
The only advantage to swimming in a pool versus a natural body of water is that I felt more secure to push myself really hard in a pool. If you become really exhausted in a pool, you are never very far from an edge, shallow end or lane divider. My lake swims, mostly in Lake Champlain, were mostly 200-300 yards from shore. I never felt secure enough to push to the point of exhaustion out where I could potentially drown.
Also, while counting laps isn't an issue in a lake, navigation is. It is a non-trivial effort keeping yourself oriented and going in more-or-less a straight line without lane markers painted right under you.
Poetry IS a swimming. In language but more deeply than words.
Wonderful comments here, thanks to all.
Poetry IS a swimming. In language but more deeply than words.
Wonderful comments here, thanks to all.
When my sister swims, She devotes a lap (or maybe two) to each of her brothers and sisters, 9 total. She silently says the names of each of our spouses, children, and grandchildren. I've considered taking up swimming to adopt this practice. It seems a thoughtful way to pray.
Or you could wear an iWatch which will measure laps for you and think of other stuff. Or still memorise poems
If you want to waste your day in a pool, that's okay too. It sounds pretty boring though.
9/28/19, 6:11 PM
Or I could work an extra hour during the week, and afford to pay somebody whatever it would cost to do whatever you said you did.
Then it can just sit there till SHTF and I never have to waste a thought on ham radio again/until Der Tag. A computer can do Morse for me, or if enough S HTF, perhaps I'll have the time to learn.
Meanwhile, I can use the time saved on swimming, sailing, personal hygiene, finance, drawing, literature, cuisine, maybe even girls.
Imagine, rhhardin, you could have a social life instead of whatever it is you do.
Meanwhile, yes, see what your Fitbit will do to measure your progress.
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