Today I swam a mile in 60 minutes which is my personal best. A mile usually takes me 65 to 70 minutes to complete. Today was different. Today I tried to focus on technique. Usually I silently sing songs. By the way, "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean" is a good song for me to swim too. The chorus has good timing for my strokes (bring back, bring back, oh bring back my bonnie to me, to me). If I don't sing songs I play alphabetical word games. Each quarter lap gets a letter except x, y, and z share. One round of the alphabet equals six laps and six alphabets makes a mile. I pick six topics and run each one through the alphabet. So for one mile I'll run through an alphabet of animals (aardvark, antelope, anteater, beaver, badger, bear), plants (chrysanthemum, cactus, corn, daisy, dahlia, dandelion), birds (egret, Eastern Bluebird, finch, falcon, flamingo), plants (Gerber daisy, geranium, grass), fish (Haddock, halibut, herring), drinks (ice water, Irish coffee, Italian wine, juice, mint julep, jack daniels), subjects in school (kindergarten, keyboarding, kinesthesiology, language arts, Latin, literature), female names (Mary, Marion, Mabel, Nancy, Nora, Nikki), male names (Oscar, Olaf, Oliver, Peter, Paul, Parker) . . . well, you get the picture. Thinking of foods makes me really hungry. All this keeps my mind occupied as I trudge up and down the swimming lane following the dark blue line at the bottom of the pool. But not today. No songs. No word games. I focused on my stroke. I really tried to use the muscles in my back and shoulders instead of my arms and I cut a good 5 or 10 minutes off my time; a personal best.
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