Growing up, my preferred sports and exercise methods always included a ball. Basketball, volleyball, tennis, golf and obviously football (also known as “soccer”) – were my preferred ways to break a sweat and stay in shape. Later in life, as business travel intensified, I had to replace the ball with the treadmill and the free weights in hotel gyms during early morning or late night workouts as a counterbalance to my daily food sins. Whenever available, I looked forward to the after workout jump in the hotel pool to cool off. It was more a casual “paddling” rather than a serious swimming. As much as I loved to watch the summer Olympics swim competitions, especially with Michael Phelps winning basically everything, I would easily get bored – and tired – after swimming a couple of laps myself. While swimming hasn’t always been really my thing, Dani, on the other hand, grew up in the water her entire life and was even on her high school swim team and participated in triathlons.
Our doctor recommended detox plan included environment change, diet change, charcoal treatment, sauna and cardio workouts. Simply put: stop any exposure to new toxins and help your body to help itself detox with charcoal, LOTS of water and reducing toxins storing fat cells by, you guessed it, reducing fat cells themselves. So that meant getting our heart rates up! As both Dani and I have joint issues from too many “ball” sports in our past (along with family histories of joint instability), swimming was the perfect low-impact, full body cardio workout. Dani was immediately sold on it – obviously – and I agreed to give it a shot.
We started swimming laps in our 15-ish meter neighborhood pool. Over the course of 4 weeks, I increased my daily swim distance to 600 meters, while Dani swam almost 1,200 meters in the same time. Impossible! It’s amazing how healthy competition can turn something I considered “boring” into my “workout of choice”. Game on!
First and foremost, the competition conditions had to be equal and fair. That meant my baggy surfer shorts had to go and be replaced with a Speedo®. I also added a swim cap and goggles. Amazing how much faster and longer I went when I wasn’t dragging a “parachute” in form of board shorts.
As the neighborhood pool season was coming to a close in late September, we had to admit we were addicted to our daily swim routine, so we signed up for an annual membership at one of Raleigh’s city aquatic centers – equipped with a 50 meter Olympic size lap pool, locker rooms and showers. Perfect! Our swimming goal was taken to the next level – 2,000 meters per day.
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