2.5 miles/ 2.5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
70 degrees
A great swim! As always, I’m amazed by how I can keep swimming when I can’t see the buoys. Part of that is straight, confident strokes and part of that is using other ways to sight–the over-turned rowboat at the little beach, the glimmering rooftop at the big beach. After swimming 2 loops, I didn’t feel up to a whole extra loop, but I didn’t want to stop at 2 so I cut a 3rd loop short by rounding the final buoy instead of swimming all the way to the little beach. Very nice. So cool to swim in so much of the lake. Amazing. The thing I noticed the most: swimming through the pockets of cold water–I can’t remember if there were pockets of warm too. Also: the planes in the sky and how the swim caps look pink to me in the water–I think they’re orange. I am trying to work on not seeing other people as problems–routing me, getting in my way, wanting to swim faster than me. I want to remember that all of these people are awesome because they’re at open swim and they love the lake like I do.
Today I looked at long poems. I’m thinking of trying to turn all of my swimming writing/open swim experience into an book-length poem–not poems, but one poem.
addendum, 9 july: I forgot to add a noise I heard: some part of my right arm–my elbow, I think–was cracking as I swam. The loud crack/pop was amplified by the water. Such a cool sound.