Today I went to the pool again and made another attempt at swimming 1.5 miles freestyle non-stop. Today I succeeded although by the end my left shoulder was quite painful. Not sure why and I have never had a problem with that shoulder. My AC separation is on the right, but the right was fine.
It took me slightly less than one hour to swim the distance. Although the pool is rather short, 20 yrds, and short pools result in faster swims, I almost always swim faster in open water than in the pool. I am not sure why that is, but maybe my inefficient turns take too much time.
Suffice it to say I never conquered the flip turn. Furthermore, in our pool, unlike all other pools I know of, one is supposed to swim in between the black lines. I guess that gives them one more lane, but it also makes calibration for flip turns difficult. One female swimmer -who is better than me- insists she needs to swim on the line, lest she gets a brain injury from missing her flip turn. I can understand why people want to swim on the line, but this "medical justification" is hogwash in my opinion.
Whatever the reason, my swim speed -if this can be called speed- is below par. Long distance swimmers, such as those conquering the English Channel swim a good 24 miles in less than 10 hours. That is 10 consecutive ironman swims, all completed in less than one hour each. As a matter of fact, it is much better than that, because in real life, hardly anyone swims "only" 22 miles. Some have been known to swim over 35 miles to make it across. Not to mention the cold, the wind, and the currents they had to fight. Clearly, swimming is not my cup of tea.
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