oh Marie Reed, you are sketchy.

And yet, oddly endearing.

I decided I couldn't handle the drive to the awesome pool tonight. And having my yoga plans run ripshod over by the unfeeling executive office and then watching my boss high-tail out of the office at 5:20 (which happens once every leap year), I decided that I was also leaving to go swim laps. At the sketchy pool. But you know - it was actually really cute. Yes, it is down a dark alley. And yes, it's marked with spray paint. But, on the plus side, it's free *and* once you get in there it has this wonderful atmosphere of community and welcomeness. Completely unlike the Arlington pool, which for the record, is not any nicer and certainly hurts in comparison in the locker room cateogry -- and tried to strip search me when I wanted to swim there as a DC resident. Whereas, at Marie Reed, I walked in, signed my name and jumped right in. It was great.

Does anyone else keep forgetting how many laps they've swum? I think I did about 600 meters tonight, but I kept losing track. On the advice of a friend of mine (shout-out to the triathlon veteran DS), I swam 25X regular;25X kickboard; 25Xpullbuoy; 25X concentrating on breathing (I always breathe every stroke and I'm trying to break the habit). Anyway, I repeated that four times, then swam 50 regular, then 50 breast stroke - and then finished (because I didn't want to and was tired and I thought it was good for my mental stamina), swam a long slow 100. I think I'm getting a lot stronger - my kick felt much better tonight. And the best part about swimming in a shallower pool is that I can really get a sense of how fast I'm moving by watching the floor zip by underneath me. I feel like I have such a long way to go though. And open water. How does *that* work?

I'm totally exhausted, it's 10:30, I know I'm lame, but I think I might go to bed and then get up and reclaim my dream of yoga tomorrow morning. The more I work out the more I seem to need to sleep.