Let me tell you all the trouble I went through to automate the count from 1 to 20, under the water
The other day, when I mastered swimming with the right pace, rhythms, and breath techniques, I suddenly could swim 1000 meters without feeling exhausted.
Exercises have never been fun for me, and swimming is almost the only one that I find somewhat enjoyable. Hence, this seemingly small accomplishment in the gym pool made me feel my life suddenly had a clear purpose, and counting laps became a must every time I was in the pool from then on.
To pursue the goal of 1000 meters in a 25-meter-long pool, I divided the laps into 4 laps of freestyle (100 meters), and then 4 laps of front strokes, and so on and so forth.
After two weeks of swimming and meticulous laps counting, I was convinced that my ability to swim to 1000 meters (or 10 4-laps) was not a one-time wonder but something to stay with me. I was proud of myself since I was such an un-sporty type of person.
Also, very soon I realized that “I can swim up to a thousand meters” was a source of pride and vain for bragging a healthy lifestyle and also put myself right in the zone of SWOLF metrics obsession.
I needed a wearable smart device to collect all the SWOLF data because updating my mental notes in the water at every 25-meter turn was becoming overwhelming.
“Oh, this is easy. Since you only need a device to count laps in the water, let me find the cheapest one for you.” Knowing too well of my bad habit of always buying the most expensive tools for trivial houseworks, Husband swiftly volunteered and ordered one watch from Walmart online store that happened to have a random big sale that day.
The watch arrived the next day or so. It was a brandless one with some tiny traces of implication that it was made in China. I eagerly opened it and read through all the menus and instructions on the watch, in the box, and online. I could find zillions of possible usages BUT swimming! It is a device even questionable of its capability of water resistance, as it suggests not to wear it for showers or saunas.
Husband then confessed the final sale price for this watch was less than $30 with an original price over $100. He is obviously too illiterate about how to measure SWOLF accurately, where I became a faster expert than him who could only stay in the swimming pool for less than 10 laps before feeling either bored to death or out of breath.
In the end, my every other day’s enthusiastic exclaim of “another 1000 today!” when I came home from the gym convinced my husband to buy me a decent Apple Watch for over $500 just for the sake of liberating my mind from the daunting counting from 1 to 20 (of 4-laps) under the water.
When the Apple watch finally arrived, the next morning I was so excited I got up at 6 am and headed for the gym pool. However, after a few laps, I noticed the watch indicated no further progress in the distance I swam. It turned out I chose the “Open Water Swim” mode instead of “Pool Swim Open.” In the end, I only swam 500+ according to the watch.
So the next time, I made sure I chose the right swimming mode in pool and selected the pool length as “25,” and I made it to 1000!
When I looked at it closer, it was “yard” not “meter.” This led to my investigation of exactly what’s the length of our gym’s swimming pool. It was confirmed it is 25 yards, not 25 meters.
What a disappointment! So all these swimming I’ve done with mental counting of laps in fact never reached 1000 meters but only 914 meters! I actually needed 4 more laps to be qualified for that bragging rights.
So, finally this morning, I set all the parameters right and got the right numbers. In fact, I still made a mistake of setting the pool length to 25 meters instead of 22 meters (of 25 yards) at the beginning and after 5 laps I stopped and restarted the counting with 22 meters a lap.
So in the end, I swam 1144 meters in order to set the record right.
The Apple Watch issued me a medal of “Longest Swimming Workout” and my SWOLFs metrics looks decent, between “very good” and “excellent” score, according to Google’s AI summary.
I had a very happy day.
On my way out, I ran into a pool acquaintance whom I haven’t seen for more than 6 months. She said she just recovered from benign breast cancer. I told her my great new achievement.
“Oh, I used to swim 100 laps but now I cut it short to one hour. I no longer count laps.” She said absentmindedly.
I was more amazed by her capability to count 100 laps than the fact she could swim that long distance of 2500 yards. She still does not wear any gadgets on her wrists but just use her mental power. I admire her for that!
