After what has been close to a six year hiatus, I'm back in the pool swimming laps. The last time I swam regularly was in graduate school when I was still living in Seattle and it feels good to be back in the water.
I've been swimming at the Bakar Fitness & Recreation Center at UCSF and have been using their six lane outdoor pool on the buildings roof a few times a week, usually alternating days that I'm not swimming with runs around San Francisco.
When I swam as an undergraduate circa 2007, I used a waterproof Otterbox case for a first gen iPod Nano which I strapped to my arm. The case was bulky and running a wired pair of headphones up my arm always felt pretty restrictive.
This time around I've been using a Sony NWWS413BM which basically looks like a pair of bluetooth headphones but is actually a standalone MP3 player with 4GB of memory built in.
So far I've been using them to listen to Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest on audio-book and the audio is surprisingly crisp underwater. I read the book somewhere around a decade ago and have been looking for an excuse to pick it back up and give it another run through.
As far as the rest of my gear goes, I'm swimming with the following:
It feels good to be working out a set of muscles I haven't thought about in a while and it feels good to be complimenting running with a different kind of cardio. I'm going to run another marathon in November, but I don't plan on swimming with a specific goal in mind other than the enjoyment I get out of being in the water.
I've been swimming at the Bakar Fitness & Recreation Center at UCSF and have been using their six lane outdoor pool on the buildings roof a few times a week, usually alternating days that I'm not swimming with runs around San Francisco.
This time around I've been using a Sony NWWS413BM which basically looks like a pair of bluetooth headphones but is actually a standalone MP3 player with 4GB of memory built in.
Sony's NWWS413BM waterproof MP3 player.
As far as the rest of my gear goes, I'm swimming with the following:
- Speedo Silicone Swim Cap
- Speedo Vanquisher 2.0 Goggles
- Speedo Solar 1
- Speedo Poly Mesh Training Suit
- Timex Men's T5E901 Ironman Watch (for lap counting)
It feels good to be working out a set of muscles I haven't thought about in a while and it feels good to be complimenting running with a different kind of cardio. I'm going to run another marathon in November, but I don't plan on swimming with a specific goal in mind other than the enjoyment I get out of being in the water.