adrian is rad

Useful background:

• I used to only swim breaststroke. I was good at it.
• I hurt my knee in August 2003 and can’t swim breaststroke anymore.
• I hurt my elbow last April and didn’t swim from then till January.
• Now I swim freestyle with an elbow brace and some pain.

I don’t really time myself swimming anymore, but yesterday I was curious as to how slow I am so I did so. Slightly pushing it (but mostly just gliding along), I did 800m in 15:40. That’s not bad! I used to swim the same distance breaststroke in about 16:00—well technically I was doing 800 yards in ~14:30—if I was going at a pretty good clip. Now freestyle is a faster stroke (1/3 faster usually), so almost the same times for the two of them isn’t that great on an absolute scale, but considering I’m swimming injured and I’m definitely not swimming my fastest, I’m pretty pleased that I’m not coming in at like 18 or 20 minutes for that distance. Go me!

I’m swimming the 1.5 mile alcatraz swim in July. I think coming in <1 hour would be a good goal and <55 minutes might be nice.