One Mile in Thirty Minutes
It's just 2mph, but it is surprisingly difficult to maintain that speed for half an hour in a swimming pool. That's the goal though. Ever since work mysteriously asked, "are you a competent swimmer?" I have my motivation to make sure I'm not the weakest link.
Swimming
I've been doing the 5am alarm thing ever since the gym changed its hours. The alarm goes off at 5am. I'm out the door around 05:15. I'm in the pool at 05:30.
The gym actually opens at 5am now, so I'm toying with a 4:30am alarm, but I'm not seeing the value of that yet. The gym is adequately non-crowded at 5:30am. If that ever changes, I'll have to change my alarm.
| Date | Distance (Yards) | Time (Minutes) | Pace (Per 100yds) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-28 | 500 | 25 | 5.00 |
| 2026-08-31 | 600 | 20 | 3.33 |
| 2026-09-01 | 650 | 20 | 3.08 |
| 2026-09-03 | 800 | 21 | 2.63 |
| 2026-09-04 | 1,000 | 26 | 2.60 |
| 2026-09-07 | 1,100 | 28 | 2.55 |
| 2026-09-08 | 1,000 | 23 | 2.30 |
I dropped back down to twenty laps (one thousand yards) today because one of my shoulders is feeling...off. Good enough to swim, but I didn't want to push it. I did swim faster though, knowing that I wasn't going to try to aim for twenty-five laps, or whatever goal I might have set next. I also determined to just do some back and calf exercises in the weight room after the swim, to also give my shoulder a break.
I do need to get this up to at least thirty minutes though, when possible, because twenty-something minutes of cardio is not a workout, at least not at the pace I'm doing. At this pace, a mile would take forty minutes. That feels like a workout.
My long term goal is a mile in thirty minutes. I used to be able to do that, back in my Denali days. That might not be realistic, but that's the purpose in having goals!
Curtis Jones
