Pool Time

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco yesterday! I decided to finally get in a lap swim. I went for a few reasons. One, to take advantage of the sunny, warm weather, and second, to prepare myself for more swimming next week. You see, my friend Kim who is an amazing boot camp instructor and overall incredibly fit woman, suggested we do some swimming this week while she's on a break from boot camp. Out of curiosity, I checked my chart where I keep track on my knee progress and workouts and noted, "Wow... I haven't been swimming since *gulp* the end of November." Uh oh. I knew why what was, of course. The weather got bad and it didn't help that swimming had become of little interest to me. It was hard to even consider getting wet and doing laps, even though I knew it was probably the best exercise for me at the time. Late November was almost 5 months since my surgery and my knee didn't seem any better than before the scope. I was frustrated and tired of the only thing I could do, swimming. The truth was that swimming did discomfort my knee a little. Back then, I wasn't even doing regular swimming as my physical therapist told me to swim with a pool buoy so I wouldn't kick too much. Hey, it's great for the arms, but it does hamper the feeling of real swimming. The cold weather and not-so-real swimming put an end to my pool workouts for a while.

I got back in the water yesterday and didn't worry about the pool buoy. My walk/running has been going pretty well, for twice a week, so I figured real swimming probably wouldn't be a major problem for my knee. Luckily, I was right. My knee feels fine this evening. My swim was good today, albeit tiring and slower than it used to be. I am very out of swim shape. I wore myself out during the warm-up! I guess I didn't realize until now how good my swim workouts were for me throughout my knee injury. There was a time I tried to swim twice a week and now I see that it helped me hold onto a base level of fitness. While I was in the pool yesterday, I kept reminding myself that in the past it didn't take that long to get back into the breathing. After a workout or two, I would feel better. I was surprised to feel a semblance of the old rhythm finally kick in (no pun intended) within my freestyle main sets of laps towards the end of the workout.

I brought my camera to shoot a few photos of the pool at the Bakar Fitness Center on the UCSF Mission Bay Campus. I joined this gym last Fall since it's close to my work. It has an indoor pool and an amazing rooftop pool as well. The only drawback to a sunny day it that it can be windy. There was some breeze yesterday, but it wasn't too bad. I think I got a faint tan line! Hmm... maybe I should swim a little backstroke so that tan line isn't only on one side. ; )