I can’t count. It’s true. I went to a top business school, graduated with an accounting degree, passed the CPA exam, and worked some tough audit and finance jobs. Yet, despite all that, I am unable to count past three. Well, I take that back. I can count past three as long as I am dry. As soon as I hit the pool, my counting skills swim away.

As everyone knows, swimming laps in the pool is monotonous. After the first couple of laps, I totally loose count of what lap I’m on. I used to use the big clock at the end of the pool to keep track. It takes me just over a minute to swim 50 yards, so keeping track on the clock tells me how many laps I’ve done. After a while though, foggy goggles make the clock hard to see. Having to spot the clock as I’m trying to make a fairly quick turn is also a challenge sometimes.

This SportCount watch is pretty nifty, and I’ve been loving it since I got it for the holidays. As the picture shows (no, that is not my hand!), you wear it on your finger and hit the button with your thumb. This is so much better than wearing a wrist watch because you don’t have to cross your arm over to slap it. Since it’s made specifically for lap counting and timing only and not telling time of day, it’s very simple and easy to use. It counts your laps and displays your lap time. At the end, it gives you your average lap time, fastest lap, slowest lap, and you can review each individual lap.

Now, if I could just get a device that tells me how many laps are in a 800 yd set. After warming up and doing a couple of sets of 400 yds, I was supposed to do an 800 yd set. Somehow, I convinced myself that it was 32 laps. After 16, I decided to quit and felt terrible that I wimped out. When I came home and told Mike, he nicely informed me that 16 laps was 800 yards. I was feeling guilty for nothing!

My triathlon last weekend pointed out some things I need to work on. My number one problem during the race was my wetsuit. As I complained about at length, I couldn’t get the wetsuit off over my calves. The wetsuit that I rented was a couple years old and had reinforced knees. This area wasn’t very stretchy and resulted in me being frustrated during T1. In my own defense, I don’t think my calves are extra large. I thought that the numbers on my arms and legs were cool, so Mike took a picture of my calves. Here’s a picture so you can judge for yourself:

The Fargo Marathon is only 10 days away, so what did I do today? Why, swim of course! I’m starting to freak out that my first triathlon is only 4 weeks after the marathon and I’ve only been in the pool a couple times. The bike is an even worse situation as I’ve only ridden a little bit on the trainer this winter. My legs are feeling pretty sore though, and with the marathon quickly approaching I don’t want to start hammering my legs on the bike. So, it looks like swimming will be my new activity until the marathon is over.

As a kid, I swam on the neighborhood swim team until I was 13 or so. I was never very fast at freestyle, but I managed to make it to conference a few times swimming breast stroke. If you saw me run, you would see why breast stroke and I were a good match. My leg likes to kick out in egg beater fashion when I run and swim. It’s not a very efficient technique for freestyle swimming or running, but it’s a match made in heaven for swimming like a frog.

Today was the first of my four lessons with Sarah, a swim coach at my fitness club. She’s done a marathon and some triathlons, so she knows what I’m looking to accomplish. I don’t need to be kicking my guts out in the water to get on the bike with my legs already toasted. Being able to swim at a decent pace and get out of the water without noodle legs is what I’m looking for.

So what happened? I loved it! Sarah watched me swim some laps and smiled and said that she was “pleasantly surprised.” Now, as a kid, I was a pretty good athlete. I played all kinds of sports and, with the exception of softball, was always one of the better kids on the team. As an adult… not so much. I’m not flexible, so I’m terrible at yoga. I took an aerobics type class at the gym and could never figure out why I was always going one way and the rest of the class was going the other. Running, as you know, is a passion but no one is “pleasantly surprised” by my results. Really, the only evidence of my athletic prowess as a youth is my ability to shoot dirty clothes into the hamper from across the room.

But today was different! She was “pleasantly surprised” and I loved being in the pool. After she assessed my stroke, she had me do some drills with the pull buoy and swimming on my side. I had a little trouble staying afloat with the side swimming drill, but I survived. I did a kicking drill that became much easier when she lent me some flippers. Then she had me do four sets of two drills followed by 100 yards of freestyle. I still don’t get the lingo of how you describe the workouts, but it made sense that the drills worked on an aspect of technique and then you try to put it all together during the freestyle laps.

One of the things I love about running is the feeling that I get when I’m done. I’m just too tired to be anything but relaxed about everything. I had the same feeling about swimming today. Afterwards, I just felt very calm and relaxed… and relieved that I seemed to be on the right track. I’m guessing that open water swimming will be more challenging than doing some drills in the pool, but for right now, swimming and I are friends.