Swimmers are an interesting lot. They get up at the crack of dawn to go to morning practice, they swim up and down the pool staring at a black line and endure odd forms of moderate torture. I get it. What I don’t get is the annual ritual of swimming 100×100’s- a set of pure torture. For my non-swimmer readers that is four lengths of the pool on a set send off and doing it 100 times.
Today was my turn to enjoy and endure this ritual at Harvard’s Blodgett Pool. Charles River Aquatics Masters hosts this event every January in memory of one their coaches that passed away several years ago.
What is crazy is that there were 150 swimmers willing to torture themselves at 9:00am on a Sunday morning. We use the entire length of the 50 meter pool to accommodate as swimmers as possible with a a wide range of “send off’s”.
I chose a responsible send off for me of 1:30. There were seven of us and we rotated the lead position every set of ten 100’s. That way everyone had a chance to lead the lane. Between 50-70 the tedium set in but I pushed through. It is a long set-2.5 hours.
Everyone in our lane finished the set and we celebrated with high fives and a pic of the lane.
I actually do understand why swimmers put themselves through this annual ritual of torture~its the sense of accomplishment you feel afterwards!
Tonight I will sleep well-zzzzzzzz
Goggle Reflections 