I think I might join you ladies in this thread. I started swimming a little over a week ago, and so far, so good. I'm not doing nearly the distances that you all are working on, but at least I'm swimming, right?

Last night the pool was nuts. First of all, as I'm exiting the locker room, I run into a guy from work who was waiting for his young daughter. Ugh - it's a bit of a shocker to see a work face while I'm in a bathing suit!

Secondly, there were TONS of people about. Luckily, there were only 4 of us sharing the two lanes, so that was nice. Until the lifeguards changed and the new one was a wimp. She seemed to look the other way when about 6-8 teenagers started goofing off in one of the lanes. My H was getting out, so the only serious swimmer in that lane came over to join me. I was glad that I only had a couple of laps to go at that point because it seemed to be getting out of hand in there. Gotta love it when school is out...not.

Anyway, I'm improving. This was only my third lap swim since 8th grade and I'm slowly getting the hang of it again. I managed 12 laps with only short rests at the wall. I'm also getting better at breathing on my weak side because a couple of times last night I had to stop and think to myself 'wait, which side is my strong side?'. I've got a long way to go, but I REALLY like that when I get out of the pool, I feel refreshed, a little tired and not the least bit sore. No pains like there is with biking or running - I can see how swimming appeals to the older folk...it's so easy on the body!!

The only downside is the snot. OMG, I was up for almost 2 hours in the middle of the night last night trying to stem the flow. My sinuses do NOT like chlorine at all. I hope that I can adjust but if I don't, I'm willing to try and learn to swim with nose clips to solve this issue.