OT: looking forward to a special swim practice on Monday the 21st.

Here's the pool I swim in. It's beautiful. It's heated in the winter to 80 degrees. It's chilled in the Summer to 82 degrees. The only times we don't have masters swim practices are on (most) Mondays, big holidays and when there's ice all over the deck (safety issue).

Today I went to the noon practice and swam with a guy named, Tom. Our coach wrote a fun workout on the board and we dragged ourselves up and down the pool, bracketed by faster swimmers in the lane on one side and slower swimmers in the lane on the other side. We knocked out about 3,000 yards from noon until 1 pm and that was that.

After swim practice I pulled on some running shoes, and a pair of running shorts, and did a leisurely run down at the lake. There are three loops most people run. There's a 2.9 mile loop, one that's about 4.5 miles and a third that's around 7 miles. If you are really ambitious you can run from Mopac to the damn on the east side of downtown, and then back around on the other side of the lake for a bit more than 12 miles. I'd already swum so the shortest loop felt like a good option to me.

That's all pretty routine, but I was excited to hear about one cool, upcoming workout that should be a lot of fun for obsessive swimmers; it's this coming Monday morning and it's 10,000 yards. We start at 8:30 am and we do 100 x 100 yards on a one minute and forty second interval. For non swimmers this means you have one minute and forty seconds to swim 100 years and, if possible get a few seconds rest. You leave on a new 100 yard swim (four laps of the 25 yard pool, per) every minute and forty seconds.  Until you've done this one hundred times in a row.

Everyone is going on the same interval. No faster lanes and no slower lanes. If we stay on pace and do the whole set we'll have swum 10,000 yards in about 2.5 hours. That's about 6.2 miles and 300 flip turns. I think I'll be ready for a big lunch right after this....

This has absolutely nothing to do with new cameras or photography of any kind. I write about it because I think it's important for photographers (and everyone else) to think about getting exercise and staying in good physical condition. I believe that when you are in good physical shape your brain is sharper, your attention is more acute. The discipline of exercising regularly also translates into habitual discipline in other areas; like photography. You can carry more, go further, stay in the field longer and be present to take advantage of chance interactions with nature or whatever it is you shoot.

Here's a link to the U.S. Masters Swimming: http://www.usms.org