I hit a rather big milestone in my swimming career today. I swam a mile for the first time. Not just a metric mile, which is the distance used during in-pool competitions; but 64 lengths for a total of 1600 meters. That’s much closer to the standard mile of 1609m. I managed to not drown myself for 36:30.

I remember the first time I tried to do lap swimming. I was gassed after four lengths, just 100 meters. I was afraid to put my face under the water. A guy in his 70s had to help me by telling me to walk in the wading pool first, bent over and just doing the upper body part of the crawl. As I do now, I’m sure I looked like an idiot in the water. But I kept swimming, and here I am cranking out a mile per session.

Next on the agenda is diminishing my rest time between 200m sets; I’m already down to 45 seconds per 200 for the first 1000m I swim. Eventually I’d like to swim the mile without any rests at all, and throw in some flip-turns to boot. I’m going to need some help on that last part; maybe that old guy is still around up in Oakton.

Technical note before my entry: I’m almost to a metric mile! 58 lengths in 34:47 yesterday. 64 lengths next week!

Part of the joy of swimming in a gym pool instead of a “real” facility like the one I used to go to in NoVA is that they tend to be empty. Even when there’s someone in the pool with me, they are normally walking. On most days, I get to feel like the fastest man in the water.

Every once and awhile there will be challengers to my crown. Most often it’s a weight lifter who watches me from the adjacent whirlpool. They get in, swim 50 or 100m, and get out, exhausted. Sometimes I’ll get someone who either used to swim or is learning how to swim for a triathlon. They’re fun — they might be a little bit faster, or a little bit slower than I am, and so we get to race. It’s hard to let go of my competitive streak.

By and large, however, I share my pool time with either the elderly, or Asian ladies who smell of White Diamonds and make it hard to breathe. They might do the breaststroke, or the backstroke. Sometimes, very rarely, they’ll do the crawl, because it’s tougher. Regardless, I’m considerably faster than they are. At least they are swimming instead of walking back and forth when they should be in the laneless “open” pool instead.

My pool companion yesterday was an old man. No big deal, except he was using a snorkel. He was trudging along, at about a third of my speed. “Who swims with a snorkel in the pool?” I thought, as I lapped him time and again.

I finished a 200m circuit and was resting to do another set, when I noticed that he was only using his right arm. He didn’t seem to kick very much either, mostly from the right side. I watched him finish a 25, wondering if he was trying to train one side on each length down the pool. Nope, here he came, slowly but steadily, using only his right side. After watching him complete another 25, I decided that he was recovering from a stroke, or other form of paralysis. In an instant, I went from making fun of the guy who swam with a snorkel to feeling totally humbled. This guy kept swimming, his left arm hanging motionless beneath the water, lap after lap.

Congratulations, Mr. Snorkel, you’re the top dog of the day. And I’m just a little fish in a little pond.

I haven’t been swimming as much as I would have liked in the last month. Last week I began doing easier pyramid workouts, wherein I alternate some of my laps with backstroke instead of doing them all freestyle. For example, my first 200 meters is alternating freestyle and backstroke, then the next 200 meters is 100 freestyle, then half backstroke and half freestyle. The “top” of the pyramid is 150m of freestyle, with the last fifty meters broken up by freestyle and backstroke.

This certainly makes the swimming part easier, but I thought my times would go down for sure. I was very surprised to discover that I’m actually faster overall with this approach, because I can swim more intensely during the freestyle portions. My “easy” lap swim time for 40 lengths? 23:27. Not fast by any stretch, but actually faster than when I was doing 100% freestyle.

I’m increasing the distance I swim every week by 200 meters, so this week I’m swimming 48 laps in about 27:20. Next week I’ll do 56 laps, and then hopefully my body won’t fall apart while we’re in New York for Lady Jaye’s cousin’s wedding.

Now that I’m swimming most of the time, writing about my workouts isn’t very interesting. What might be interesting, especially to those currently on fat loss or workout programs of their own, is the change in my clothing sizes. Here’s a running tally:

• Six pairs of jeans or shorts, down two waist sizes (pictured above).
• Two pairs of dress pants, down two waist sizes.
• One motorcycle jacket, down two chest sizes.
• One belt, down from a 36 to a 34. The 34 is on its way out soon.
• My motorcycle helmet is a little bit looser now. Not dangerously so, but enough for me to notice.
• My motorcycle boots are now a little roomier. I never thought I had a fat foot, but apparently I lost some weight there, too.

Here’s to another set of belt holes! Now if I could just get rid of this last stubborn belly fat ….

I wrote a commendation for my personal trainer Yoda earlier in the month after we finished up our 40 sessions. I sent it to our gym’s general manager and our account rep, along with my before and after pictures. I expected Yoda to get some kudos, maybe a bonus of some kind, and that would be the end of it.

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Last Friday I completed my last set of sessions with Yoda. He commemorated the event by kicking the shit out of me and running me through the entire workout with no more than 60 seconds of rest between exercises. We didn’t do any handstand pushups, but there were plenty of farewell wheelbarrows, bear crawls, reverse pushups, weighted pullups and dips, and other feats of strength to keep me sore throughout the weekend. We finished off the session with ten minute session on the incline treadmill of doom, with a two minute burst at 45% grade. Total workout time: 83 minutes.

I was very happy with the progress I’d made with Yoda, but both my wallet and enthusiasm wanted some time off from personal training. I met my goal of 12% body fat in July, and didn’t have a clear-cut idea of where I wanted to go next. I wanted to figure out my next big goal without paying for a trainer, or wasting their time.

In the meantime, I’m going to start swimming again. I started yesterday. Swimming isn’t very fun for me, but my body reacts well to it. My triceps are already sore from my short workout of 40 laps. I completed all 40 laps + rest time in 24:24. I have a short-term tactical goal of swimming the same distance in 20 minutes or less. I can already identify weakness in my technique that will help me go faster with less effort. I rotate from my shoulders instead of from my hips to breathe, and this fucks up my already crappy streamlining. I am also very tense in the water, and I am not putting my head and shoulders deep enough into the water — probably related to my poor breathing technique. Plus my body isn’t straight, I kick too much, etc. etc. I have a lot of work to do, and I wasn’t that great of a swimmer to begin with.

At any rate, here are some final body shots from my time with Yoda:

The front

Still no disco tits, but I’ll take what I can get — especially since you couldn’t discern my waist at all when I started. My deltoids and arms haven’t gotten any bigger, but this isn’t a surprise to me given how I am built and the exercises we were doing. Expect to see more from swimming. My collarbones are also more prominent now, as are my apparently VERY out of balanced hip bones.

The back

I’m still happy with my back, despite my hope that working out would somehow make the hair stop growing back there. My lats are much more developed. My triceps are much more defined and larger than when I started. You can even make out the head differentiation on my right arm.

The side

Ridding myself of my desk fat was the #1 reason I went to see Yoda in the first place. I am very pleased with this result — look at that spare tire! You can’t even see my ribs in the starting photo. Not bad for four months, especially since I feel like I didn’t give up a lot of DrFaulken staples, like eating a pound of cheeseburgers at a time. If I could somehow get my hips and swayback into alignment, I might actually look like a real human someday!