Friday, July 4, 2014

My first purchase - swim equipment

Just to enter the race costs $650. Well, really $728 after accounting for an obligatory " one day USAT membership", a hefty $40 processing fee and taxes.

That was $728 more than we budgeted a week ago, so it's accurate to say that the mood in our household was less than enthusiastic to spend even more money on this new endeavor.

Fortunately, research is mostly free, and fathers day was just a few weeks away for major purchases, so the first step was simply to get started and assess my current state of fitness.

The most unknown factor was swimming. So to my aid I called my friend David who I learned via a Throwback Thursday Facebook post, managed to win swimming medals when he was in college.  Although this was more than two decades ago, I reasoned his technique would be solid, and he would be able to 'fine tune and hone' my already pretty much fabulous swimming technique. After all, I had swimming lessons as a kid, right?

David was eager to cooperate. 20 years of Texas diet had not been kind to him, and although he purchased a three year membership at the gym, his motivation to go in consistently was - well - difficult to say the least. This could be his ticket to lose the 100 lbs (!) he gained since college.

Armed with a 2 week free trial membership, I meet David at the LA fitness. Eagerly I start my first lap, as David stands on the side of the pool to watch my current form.

After the first lap, he offers to race against me. "Are you serious" is my first thought; David is shorter than me, older than me, and for sure "not as aqua dynamically shaped" as me. Seriously, he has 100 lbs on me. And -as I mentioned before - I already have great technique, right?

He smoked my ass. With the proverbial "two fingers in his nose and a cigarette in his mouth" while racing. The first round. The second one. And again. Every time. The entire hour.

He gave me many pointers during the session, which will be topic of a future post on swimming technique. But the one thing that was to be an imminent purchase was goggles and a swim cap.  So off to the wallies world that afternoon.  This is the result of my first purchase:

Is my head too big for this swim cap? (Careful: this question is the man version of "Does my butt look big in these pants".) This is ridiculous. Walmart caps suck

Obviously, this was not going to work - so a trip to Luke's Locker was to resolve this first hurdle. This time I tried the speedo cap on in the store before I brought it home.  Still tight (I guess I just have a big nugget) - but doable.  Also purchased some better goggles and got sucked into buying new running socks. Man, $50 gets spent quick, doesn't it?

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