Goals Part 1 - Swimming

I'm in Vegas at the moment.  It's the most surreal place I've ever been to.  When I think about it my head hurts, so I just don't, and imagine I'm in a dream.  A very expensive dream, but luckily, because everything here is in dollars and I can't do mental maths, I don't really know how expensive it is. The ATMs are still giving me money, albeit slightly more reluctantly each time, so it can't be that horrendous.

Whilst I'm here, playing poker (and winning a tournament, yay!), shopping, seeing shows and dancing with dolphins (cost twice my poker winnings, nay!), I've been thinking about plans and goals. 

Actually, I've been having some pretty deep and meaningful thoughts, in the most shallow and meaningless of places.  Trust me to be inappropriate.

Anyway, back to goals.

Part 1 - Swimming

I enrolled on a swimming course to learn open water swimming, I've got my Total Immersion swimming book.  I've also got some advice from Inspirational Steve.  And where would I be without my poolmate?

They all say different things. 

What's a girl to do?  Well, this girl likes experimenting, and so, armed with my poolmate and with various drills, I worked out that the best thing for me to do is .... well, none and all of the above. 

It turns out that I am more efficient, and faster if I breathe every second stroke (against all advice), roll a lot from one side to the other (Yes - Total Immersion, No - everyone else), keep my elbows high in the water (No - Total Immersion, Yes - everyone else), or hold on to a dolphin.  Now, dolphins aren't allowed in official triathlons, so I'm going to work on improving all the other bits. 

Turns out that you can improve a lot by building up arm strength if you do press ups.  So Objective #1 - Do a press up.

Turns out that the efficiency rating that my poolmate calculates is quite useful.  It's sort of a measurement of how efficient each of your strokes are, and how fast you can go.  It has a lot to do with arm strength.  I've already got it from 110 to 55 (turns out I had input the wrong settings, bless).  I still don't know how they work it out, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. The book says that average is 50-75.  Above average is 40-50.  I want to get myself some of that above average stuff.  So Objective #2 - Get an efficiency of 49 or better. 

Why have two goals when you can have three?  So Objective #3 - swim 10x25 lengths in less than 6 minutes.  That's a nice round number.  Unfortunately it's not a number I've ever seen on my poolmate before.  It normally begins with a 6, but ends with a .59.

Now everyone knows that objectives have to be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, something beginning with R, and Timely.

Objective #1 - I'm aiming for the end of the month.  If that goes well I'll see if I can do 10 by the end of the following month.
Objective #2 - I'm aiming for the end of June - I need my press ups to be able to improve my effiency
Objective #3 - I'd love it, just love it, if I could do that by the end of June too, but I think it'll be too hard, so will settle for some time before I die.  It'll be much more difficult to achieve this any later.

I'll need to train about 3 times per week to do this.  If only I had easy access to a pool.  Wait, is there a pool at the Bellagio?  No, there are seven.  And this being Vegas, the main one is not a measly 25m.  Hell it's not even an Olympic sized pool.  It's a whopping 55m long.  Oh, that's going to need some mental maths.