Typing Outloud

I wanted somewhere to splah about this, and this blog is as good a place as any, so...

The pool I swim in for Masters (and on the weekends) is closed August 8 - September 7 for some kind of maintenance or other (I've heard two stories, one about the roof and one about the pool drains), so my team isn't practicing for a month. I contacted another Masters team in the area whom I plan to swim that month with, and they have an interesting schedule that includes three morning practices (M/W/F), two evening practices (T/R) and a weekend practice (Saturday).

The morning practices are pretty much the same time as the ones I'm currently doing (fifteen minutes earlier), so I was thinking I'd just do those. The only issue there is that it's pretty far from home (doubling my driving time, really), and they don't have a place to shower, so I'd either have to drive all the way back home to shower, and then back across town to work, or brave the scary, uncleaned work shower.

The evening practices are a bit late (7:00 - 8:30), but I could go to them and then back home to shower and not have to drive around as much. Plus there's the added bonus of not having to wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Though I'm not sure if Lori can make the night practices. Plus they're late enough that I'd probably rather be at home on my couch in my PJs than going out to swim at seven at night.

I think going to the Saturday morning practice is a given, though. If I do M/W/F morning and then add Saturday (which isn't early, 8:00AM - 9:30AM), that would be a pretty good setup, assuming the getting up thirty minutes earlier doesn't kill me.

Blah blah blah. Anyway, when I go back to my regular team in September, they're opening up practice to be six days a week, Monday through Saturday. I don't know yet what time of day the T/R/S practices are going to be, but... It's a very real possibility that I might try and swim all six days a week. Which will probably be insane, but I think a good thing as well. I like swimming, the cost (assuming they don't change it and they let us swim as many days a week as we want) is awesome, and the health benefits are already very apparent.

What does this mean for me? Well, for one, it means I need to learn how to go to bed before midnight, because if I'm getting up at 5:00AM all five working days and not sleeping, I will crash really hard in the middle of the week. And be miserable. Another thing, it means I will need to reevaluate my winter sports participation.

Usually I play in two hockey leagues, and adult recreational league and on an all women's travel team. The women's team has once a week practices, which are great, but they're also at 9:30PM. Last season they went 90 minutes, so I didn't get home until after 11:30, then had to get up at 5:00 the next morning. I suppose I'll wait and see what comes out as far as practice and such, but I might just sign up as a practice only player (and a sub) and not do all the travel games, or I might not play with the women's team at all. I will probably still play in the adult rec league because it's only one day a week - usually Sunday - and I DO still want to play hockey. I love hockey.

What I really need is just more hours in the day. Who do I talk to about that? ;)

But honestly, back when I was lazy and kinda overweight and such, people would say, "oh, you can get addicted to exercise", to which I responded, "yeah right." Well. Yeah. Guess who's a believer? And I'm really excited about all this extra practice. This guy on my team, Reu, is going to be coaching the extra three days and I'm geeked because he's a GREAT coach. And a pretty super guy, too.