Lake Swimming

It's officially summer, and I have officially returned to the ranks of the lake swimmers. Yea!

That's right -- I jumped in the pond last night and did a lap and a half. It was warmer than I expected, so there was no threat of hypothermia at all. I didn't swim very fast, but I really had no aspirations to do so. Just wanted to get in and slog through a mile or two, and I was able to do that.

Standard complaints apply: Rookies in wetsuits who don't watch where they're going, slimy mud on the bottom, no lane stripes or pace clocks, etc. But perhaps the most discouraging news is that my sighting ability seems to have declined since last year...and it wasn't too rippy red hot then. Ugh.

What this means is that I really and truly need someone to follow. Of course, drafting is already my preferred method of swimming (regardless of venue), so I wouldn't blame you for suspecting that I'm fabricating my visual infirmity as an excuse to let someone else pull the load. But I swear it's not totally the case: I really can't see where I'm going.

Or more precisely, I can't distinguish features on shore well enough to line them up as navigational beacons. Everything on the shore seems to be the same blurry shape, the same greenish color, and the same sort of mobile target that won't stand still as I try to point myself at it. This last point puzzles me; throughout my public education, I was taught that most non-Tolkienian trees tend to remain in one spot (relativity aside...I know the earth is spinning and that stuff in the Milky Way is chugging about the Galactic Core, etc -- but let's not go there), and that they could be counted on to provide a visual reference for anyone trying to travel in a straight line. But I could swear these trees were playing games with me, shifting a few feet to the left every time I ducked my head to take a non-sighting stroke.

Either that, or I tend to drift to the right as I swim. I'm afraid my path across the lake last night described a giant arc. (Again, please spare me the Coriolis effect lectures. I wasn't that slow!)

But let's assume for a moment that the trees were NOT moving. In that case, visual acuity has nothing to do with my as-yet-unexplained drift. It wasn't the wind, and there are no currents to speak of in the pond. (There were some rather extreme variations in the water temperature as I swam across, but I'd really rather not think about what caused them.) My wandering wasn't due to boat wake, tides caused by black hole gravity, nor underwater activity by the CHUDs. Therefore, I am reluctantly forced to consider my own stroke as a possible cause of the circumferential nature of my supposedly straight-line swimming.

Here's my theory: It's the carpal tunnel syndrome. My right arm is constantly in a knot because of all the mousing and typing I do. The difference between my left side range of motion and that of my right side is positively Quasimodoic. It wouldn't surprise me if my right side is therefore weaker, which would logically lead to a slicing trajectory. If that's the case, then the solution becomes obvious: Stop using a computer until all my tendons and muscles revert to their feral state.

Sounds good to me. I'll see if there isn't some legislation somewhere that I could use to force my boss to give me a typist to whom I could dictate all my work. I'll also call Franklin D. Azar for advice on how to make my arm stronger. I'll be swimming straight before you know it!

Anyway, it was nice to be back in the pond, and to earn myself a few brownie points among my pals in the lake swimming world.

Tonight, it's track practice. My brother has a workout planned, as well as a social event for dinner following the workout. I'm hoping to resume educational blogging soon, because I know how much everyone appreciates Star Trek and 3 Stooges trivia. But with a Pikes Peak run coming this weekend, and the Triple Bypass bike ride only a couple of weeks away, I may get stuck on workout topics for a while yet. Tomorrow is Fun Friday at the pool, though, and who knows? That may involve both athletics and philosophy. I'll let you know. In the meantime, try to avoid tunnelling your carpals, and have a great day!