Splash! Triple splash!

The shiny building that takes up most of this picture is the 24 Hour Fitness Lakeshore Towers Club, in Irvine, California.

(The building to the left is Il Fornaio, which is where I usally “eat up” when I visit my company’s Irvine office, which is just outside the picture to the bottom. The street on the right edge of the picture is Von Karman Avenue, and the highway at the top is the notorious San Diego Freeway, I-405. Note that the complex you’re looking at is called “Lakeshore Towers”. That pond between the club and Il Fornaio is, I guess the “lake”. The former Irvine Ranch, in its time the biggest ranch in the world, is arid. Central Irvine has several large ponds that are called lakes, but Lakeshore Towers has nothing resembling Toronto or Chicago’s respective Lakeshores. It’s just a funny moniker.)

You’ll note the bright blue of the club’s outdoor, salt-water pool. swimmersguide.com lists it as 25 m long, but I suspect it’s 25 yd.

No fewer than thrice I’ve been to the pool this week: Sunday, Monday, and this afternoon (Wednesday). Each time my work-out has been precisely the same—four lengths each of: kicking on my back without fins; then, with fins, fish, skate, shark, switch, double switch, and triple switch—a total of 28 lengths, for an estimated 700 yd.

The good news is: I’m going to the pool, by myself, and doing my drills. And, I think, I’m getting better, a bit better, each time.

The bad news is: I can’t steer! Especially my first two times—less so, today—I would veer from side to side, between the pool wall and the next lane rope!

I plan—hope?—to go again tomorrow, my last chance on this business trip to southern California.

I had planned to do some weight work after I swam but this was a fond hope. I’m such an inefficient swimmer, even 700 yd with fins tires me out. Having said that, I do expect to run a mile this afternoon. (See my next post.)

Update, May 11/06: Just got an e-mail from 24 Hour Fitness. The pool is indeed 25 metres long. I’ve happily added 66 yards to each of my work-outs!