LapCounter

I love swimming. I don't have fantastic technique or lightning speed but I enjoy it. I've never had a swim lesson in my life, as far as I know, and sometimes I entertain the idea of doing it. I'd love to learn how to turn at the end of the lane. And I'll confess that I usually "crawl" with my head out of the water - though at this point in my life I justify it to myself because I need to be able to hear if I get paged back to the childcare center, right?! 

Most of all I wish I could keep track of how many laps I've swum. I'm terrible at remembering stuff like that and it drives me crazy. Previously, as I've struggled to remember what lap I'm on, I kept thinking there must be some sort of gadget to keep track of that. The other day I finally remembered to go look online and sure enough, there are numerous gadgets for exactly that purpose.

I decided to get all wild and crazy with my money and I impulsively bought a SportCount LapCounter. There's a basic lapcounter OR for a few bucks more you can upgrade to one that keeps track of your pace and total time. But the basic one had tons more reviews and I figured I can keep track of the time easily enough so I went for simple (less stuff to break that way, right?).

Today was my first time trying it out and can I just tell you, I love, love, loved this little gadget! It was so easy to use.



I've often wondered how far I could swim but by the time I would get to like 25 laps, I would be really struggling to keep count. So I aimed low and asked the guards how many laps to swim half a mile - 31 laps. After counting to ten I doubled checked with the guard to make sure that a lap was two lengths of the pool (to the other side and back) and found out that in fact half a mile was actually 31 LENGTHS so I'd actually swum 20/31 lengths at that point. I decided I should go ahead and do a mile (62 lengths).  The added benefit to keeping track of lengths, instead of laps, was that I knew it was always odd at one end of the pool and even at the other so if I ever questioned whether or not I had actually hit the button, it was easy to double check myself.

Unfortunately I'm not exactly sure how long it took to swim my 62 lengths because on that tenth lap, I got paged to the childcare center. Off I went in my swimsuit. They told me I needed to change a diaper...which turned out to be a false alarm. (For some reason my two year old likes to announce that she has a poopy diaper. Of course I'm used to this and totally ignore her but they didn't know. *sigh*) I think it was good that I showed up when I did because a little girl in the bathroom had an accident so I was able to alert the staff.

Anyway, I got into the pool at like 12:55 and got out of the pool at like 2:05 but I'll bet I was out for the childcare adventure for at least 30 minutes. I hadn't been in the pool much more than ten minutes when I got paged and by the time I got back in, I know it was after 12:30.  Okay, okay, I know no one else cares about all these details. (Though if you're like me, you might understand what it's like to get obsessed with the STATS.)

Next time I'll have to keep better track of the time.  I doubt my time will be super fast because as soon as I get tired, what to I do? Yep, the breast stroke.  Tonight I was reading up on the various strokes and discovered that while the breast stroke feels the most comfortable (because you can breathe naturally), it actually burns the most calories.  Yippee.  :)