1.5 loops
101 laps
ywca pool
Another swim! Today the pool was not that crowded, and by the time I was done, it was almost empty. Then, after Scott and I got out of the hot tub, it was completely empty. I almost wanted to get in and swim some more. I probably would have if we didn’t need to go shopping. Scott commented on how calm and still it was.
The swim felt good — mostly. At the beginning, a little harder to breathe, but as I warmed up, it got easier. The woman next to me also had an open swim club cap on; I would have said something to her, but I was afraid I was seeing it wrong. She was a strong, slow swimmer. She swam freestyle with some snorkeling and breaststroke mixed in. Many new friends in the other lane: first, someone in black swim trunks, kicking furiously as they swam freestyle for a 50, then stopping, then breaststroke, then a break. They lasted 5 or 10 minutes. Next was someone in an orange suit, doing a slanted breaststroke. After them another fast-ish freestyler. My favorite friend: the shadows dancing on the pool floor. Everything looked almost animated — like a cartoon, not quite real, and also hyper-real.
Continuous 200s again. A ladder of 50: breathing 2/3/4/5/6/7/6/5/4/3. A set of continuous 100s, with the second fifty faster and more kicking — a 6 beat kick?
In the hot tub, I asked Scott if he wanted to increase his mileage to make his workout longer, so that I could swim longer. I’d like to increase my average per workout from 1.5 to 2 loops/miles. He said yes! I need to figure out some fun writing/attention/imagining/thinking experiments as I swim for January.
This past Tuesday, during the community jazz band rehearsal in which I don’t play, I read more of Jana Prikyl’s Midwood. Some of it I like, much of it I don’t understand, which could mean I need to read it several more times, or that I just don’t like it. Here’s a poem I copied into my plague notebook that spole to me immediately.
Another Visit/ Jana Prikyl
A flock of Boy Scouts dispersing early morning
from the summits down into the valley
while I looked from the window of another
visit to that city, considering the bus routes
I’d sew together along the rim of the hills
and the park tucked under the shoulder of a slope
I mean to see but never do, made of transparencies
that dropped their leaves on top of leaves
description falls, it’s there without me