Posts Tagged ‘swimming’

Posts Tagged ‘swimming’


Shut up, Matt!

5.25.2010 | 3 Comments

My friend Matt takes great pleasure in trying to freak me out. Case in point:

I recently posted a wee blog about swimming and math (now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say), wherein I attempt to calculate how long I would need to swim in order to replicate the physical exertion I will be expending as I climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Matt responds thus:

Swimming horizontally equals climbing vertically? That is most definitely some odd reasoning, Byn 🙂 More like: 19,340 ft divided by an average building storey at 12ft equals climbing 1612 sets of stairs.
Or going up the Empire State Building’s stairs about 15 times.

SHUT UP, MATT!

His recent response is reminiscent to my first Got Math post regarding the fact that the height of Kilimanjaro is approximately 6kms, to which Matt responded:
Six kilometres straight up?! It’s like doing The Chief 8½ times. Without a break!

SHUT UP, MATT!

I’m trying to fake myself out of how difficult this is going to be, but that pesky bugger keeps trying to bring me back to reality with all his fancy-schmancy math mumbo-jumbo! I mean really, it’s like he’s trying to prepare me or something. Trying to make sure that I know what I’m getting myself into. Trying to show me that it’ll be really, really difficult when all I want to do is trick myself into believing that this is going to be a relative stroll in a warm country. He’s trying to be all caring and friend-like!  What a total jerk.
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Got Math?

5.23.2010 | 1 Comment

Ok, let’s see here…

*grabs calculator*

If the length of the ogling swimming pool is 25 metres, and Kili is 19, 340 feet…

*tappity tap tap*

… that means that Kili is 5895 metres, and so that’s going to be…

*tappity tap tap tap*

236 lengths of the pool… which divided by 2 is…

*tap tap*

188 LAPS of the pool.

Hmmm.

SO! If it takes me about 60 seconds to do one lap of the pool, then all I need to do to simulate the amount of energy it will take to climb Kili is…

*tappity tap tap tap tap*

…swim for two solid hours.

Not a problem.

Now, where is my flowered swim cap and matching oxygen tank?

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The One-Piece.

4.26.2010 | 0 Comments

In a never-ending quest to find new and exciting ways to train, I decided to do something really stupid: take up swimming.

But swimming is great exercise, Robyn!” you say, “it’s low-impact, good for your wonky hips, works all your muscles, and lets you gawk at hot lifeguards while working out. What’s not to love?

I like swimming, I do. As you know, I used to be a Ladner Stingray (along with my climbing teammate, Alison), and so am fairly confident in my swimming skills. However, my body mass is quite different now then when I was a young Stingray, and so there are parts of my body that now sink, as opposed to when I was young and was possessed with all-encompassing buoyancy. It’s a humbling experience. But whatever, it’s worth it… right?

As much as swimming is a great sport and a fantastic workout, (and I find those little blue kickboards to be kind of adorable), and as accessible and inexpensive as it is… it’s the trauma that accompanies it that makes me smack my forehead repeatedly, while muttering “why? why? why? WHY?”

That’s right – Bathing Suit Shopping.

It has got to be one of the most traumatic, depressing, shock-inducing, rage-creating, tear-worthy events that women undertake. I’m not in bad shape, but when I put on a bathing suit, little neon arrows pop up in mid air to point at the poufy spots that shouldn’t be poufy. Alarms sound! Lights flash! There is panic in the street! Cats and dogs living together! MASS HYSTERIA!

There is nothing in the world that a woman does faster than take off an ill-fitting bathing suit. GAH! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! Get it off! get it off!! Bathing suit shopping is the LSD of retail experience.

I have NO IDEA why the US government has such a hard time getting confessions out of terrorists. They don’t need waterboarding. They don’t need Barney and Friends theme music.  All they need is a fully-mirrored room, and multiple bathing suits of descending size.

If I were President, I would turn Guantanamo into a Swimco. And then staff it with size zero women.

“I DID IT, I DID IT! I’M SORRY! NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS!!!”

Aaaaaaaaaaanyway…

I braved the mall, and  *shudder* tried on a couple of suits. I mean, that’s bad enough, right? But to add insult to injury, someone felt that it was a good idea to charge an astronomical sum for swimsuits! Do you SEE how much material is there!? And when you buy a bikini, it costs even MORE! I think the people who set the price for swimsuits are the same people that set the price for printer ink.

But I did it. I bought myself a swimsuit. It was even on sale! I feel much better now… mostly because I won’t have to go swimsuit shopping for another few years.

Now… where is that over-sized beach towel of mine…?

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I Blame My Mother

3.31.2010 | 3 Comments

When we were quite a bit younger, Ali and I were in the Ladner Stingrays Swim Club. Not only did we have swim meets on the weekends and swim practices in the evenings, we also had the most evil thing in the entire world: 7am before-school swims.

That’s right. We had to get up at 6:30, and go to the Ladner OUTDOOR pool. I will never, ever forget the feeling of stepping onto that cold, nubbly concrete deck, and looking into that water just knowing that I had to jump in there.

They told me that the pool was “heated”, and one could certainly ascertain that by simply looking at the water through the mist of the morning, and seeing the streams of teasing “steam” coming off it. I believed them. I actually believed them. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I’d be all wrapped up in my comfy jammies (with my bathing suit underneath, of course), and would sometimes even have a warm blanket draped around my shoulders. My feet, bare and feeling the cold of the deck, tried to tell me to run. They knew that it was cold! But noooo. My stupid brain said that I had to get into the pool.

To have to get all the comfy layers off to jump into a massive bath of cold water was not at all easy. To this day I simply cannot handle getting into cold water. I get all panicky and freaked out, and begin flailing in the water as I try desperately to doggy paddle and cry at the same time.

The ONLY thing that made the morning bearable was the fact that my mother was (and still is) an inventive, intelligent woman. She knew that her children wouldn’t want to wake up and go swimming! Did she want to fight with three grumpy, snarly kids when she herself was half-asleep? No!

To wake her children up on those 7am swim mornings, my mother would gently place a small chocolate macaroon on our tongues as we slept. She’d stay with us until we woke up, happily to the taste of chocolate, and then she’d hand us another macaroon and softly tell us that we needed to get up and get ready to go. And we would.

To this day, the taste of chocolate & coconut reminds me of my mom. It makes me smile. It reminds me that even though I may have to do something I don’t want to do, I can make it sorta’ fun if I get creative with it. My mom actually made it possible for us to look forward to those 7am swims. Genius, isn’t it?

And so, that’s why I am bringing a bag of chocolate macaroons with me on my Kili climb. I’ll have them tucked away beside my sleeping bag, and when I am woken the morning, I will grab a macaroon and be happy, even for a brief moment, before I get my cold clothes on and trudge up a mountain.

Gotta’ say, I love the fact that I can turn even the most strenuous of physical activities into an excuse to eat chocolate. Thanks mom! xo

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