Night swimming, sort of

Longtime readers of this space have heard my repeated complaints about the places where I've swum. Here in Cheyenne, it's the 86-degree YMCA pool, which trumps the Municipal Pool near Lions Park by virtue of runoff gutters. There are rust-colored stains on the pool's floor at the Y, to go with missing sections of tile on the side, indeterminate brownish gook on the deck and full gutters when I get in each afternoon. But there's lap swimming in the middle of the day, most days I get my own lane and the lifeguards know I'm serious and have cleared out a lane for me. I wouldn't compare being a regular at a pool with being a regular at a bar, but there are benefits to going to the same place all the time and seeing the same folks. Not necessarily a bad thing.

It's a little bit after 3 a.m. on Sunday, March 18. Since it was March 17 by the time I got off work a little more than 24 hours ago, I did my green day revelry then, marking the day with a car bomb and a couple pints of Guinness. Tonight, though, I headed over to the pool after work to swim for an hour and raise money for pool repairs. I didn't really raise any money because a Facebook plea went unacknowledged and I hate asking people for money for any reason, especially since I'm the only one I know who uses the Y. So I'll front the require C-note myself and rest easy in the knowledge that I did my part to keep my place of swimming somewhat repaired.

While I do usually get my own lane when I swim during the day, it was weird to have the whole pool to myself. There were two lifeguards there, and one of them, a younger girl, had a friend there to keep her company. I swam. I got in the water immediately after a stud high-schooler got out, and I settled into a rhythm. To keep an accurate count, I swam every 12th length backstroke. I looked out the skylights above and they were black from the night sky, quite a departure from the usual stark white that lights up the pool. The big windows near the whirlpool also were dark; swimming at night gives a different perspective.

I never counted strokes per length or anything, but the above paragraph illustrates how I kept my mind occupied — surveying my environment, popping my head up every so often to hear what the radio was playing, thinking about life, wondering what would happen if the power went out and the water temperature dropped five degrees.

Oh, and trying to figure out how far I'd swum. Tonight illustrated perfectly why I rarely do long steady swims in my workouts. I can't count laps to save my life, even though tonight I rolled over for a length of backstroke every 300 meters. In high school, I'd wait for the fast dudes in the lane next to me to finish their 500s, then I'd swim an extra lap. No need to count. Now, it's intervals, all day every day.

So I swam roughly 3900 meters, because I know I miscounted in a couple of spots. For a one-hour swim, I'm happy about it. I got to take myself to an odd place for this time of night; exercising at night is always a rare treat, and if I didn't live in such a dodgy part of town I'd do it ore often. I got in a groove and stayed there, even if I can't fully quantify it. I created my own waves next to the wall and moved with their rise and fall.

And I had 100,000 gallons of tepid, chlorinated, artificially and poorly sanitized water to myself. A dude could get used to that.