Swimming.

Yes, go swimming! It's great, esepcially the first few lengths before you get tired.

Don't eat for at least 2 hours before you go - apart from the risk of cramp, you'll be using up too much energy digesting and will feel very unfit. I'd advise not doing it with a hangover either, personally.

Preparations - none really, other than have a shower before you go. If you have sensitive eyes of intend to be underwater a lot, get some goggles. Find your nearest municipal pool - you won't pay more than £3 for a swim, and the standard is usually pretty high.

Don't worry about annoying other swimmers. There will almost ceratinly be lanes for swimming, and they are usually slow/medium/fast/crawl or similar. Just start in the slow one, and you may find you actually don't need to be there. Remeber, a lot of elderly people swim, so you're unlikely to be the least capable.

Swim until you get tired. If it's exercise, you want to be doing a minimum of 30 minutes, but pace yourself - you can always speed up if you're not even short of breath after 10 minutes.

It's a great opportunity to focus on something and to think. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.petergowland.com/images2/PG378M20.jpg

Never been naked swimming though, or seen Colin's penis

it's been a while since i've gotten the chance to actually really swim athletic-stylee and not just splash around. yep, i've still got it. *flexes guns*

There was a queue of a couple of hundred people outside the Twickenham Lido place when I cycled past at about 11am today. It couldn't be a better day for it, though.

http://www.gb-sports.co.uk/speedotechpaddle.jpg

When you stop using them you feel like your tiny little hands are so ineffective.

search: swimming buzz.
destroy: everyone else in the pool.

Ian, my sister met her husband when she was lifeguarding & my dad met my mom when he was lifeguarding. ;-) So good luck with the cute lifeguard.

There's a lido in Twickenham? Maybe you meant Pools in The Park at Richmond? It's normally crap and full of yuppies. The best pool in my locale is Hampton Open Air Pool, open 365 days a year. It's absolutely fantastic in the winter. I go most Sundays, but yesterday the queue was too long, even at 9.30 pm, so had to go to Teddington instead.

I went to the pool after work on Friday and it was bliss. Knocked off 70 lengths (it's only a 20m pool though!) easy, which is nice considering I've not been for a while. It's part of the staff gym so it does get very busy at times, and bloody men splashing away doing their special GRRRRR MAN CRAWL MAN SMASH stroke when the pool's too full is really annoying.

but now that i'm joined, i end up doing other things more, and don't seem to do more than 10 laps or something as a cool down.

i used to swim like crazy, though. 6 days a week, at least 2 hours a day. swimming with BUCKETS attached to my legs. wtf? i can't even imagine doing that crap now...

Slacking off, you cheeky bastard when I actually pass my driving test
its back to the usual routine :)

My ass is incredibly sore now though.

I Do the swiming.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/14/christine-newtonjohn-ohio_n_166968.html

CHARDON, Ohio — A woman has pleaded guilty to reckless homicide for exercising her 73-year-old husband to death in a swimming pool, repeatedly refusing to let him leave the water.

You neglected to mention that she was a post-op.

we signed up for the Y and it's great because i haven't had anywhere to swim regularly in years and they've got a heated indoor pool. but all i really want to do is fuck around and float on my back and swim down and touch the bottom, but they've got it structured so the only "adult time" is lap swimming or playing with your kids in the shallow end (i don't have kids) so basically i end up doing lazy-ass backstroke "laps" (ie floating around my back really slowly). maybe once i get some goggles i do some grownup swimming

buy some kids

i'll lend you my kid for a fiver (any currency)

goggles are a game-changer!

I really am a VERY crap swimmer. I think that's why I decided to take my oldest kid to swimming class. This of course means mummy has to join. But she loves it. She's already had about four lessons now? I think so. About that nr. They even push her under water! Second (last) time she didn't even cry (mainly because mummy kept saying she was a little mermaid hah).

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2481/3933902946_c543ab3081_m.jpg

cute face kid.

i am v good at swimming wrt being able to do it for a pretty long time and swim underwater forever and stuff but i wish i could learn proper technique for lap swimming. such as flip turns and breathing and doing the right stuff with my arms. maybe i could take lessons too. i think i could be quite fast if i learned how.

I took some lessons (in my early pregnancy). Re-affirmed that my left knee is fuxored

the problem with trying to do laps without goggles is not being able to tell where you're going and worrying you're going to run into people

trick is to violently throw your arms around. they'll swim away, rest assured

yeah laps w/o goggles is impossible for me (contacts or blindness). really, tho, once i got a pair of goggles and had an ex-swimmer classmate show me what i was doing wrong (stroke-wise), swimming laps became much more appealing. but the first few times i went i was totally gassed after like 1.5 25m lengths. my body didn't have any clue what to do to be efficient. but it got easier, quickly

i quit masters swim team thing because my skin cant handle the chemicals, but having soft looking old people smoke me over and over was humbling. and i was in pretty good damn good aerobic/endurance conditoin, and i'm not even that terrible at swimming. like xc skiing, technique is crucial for speed.

also, i am listening to the album swimming by french kicks which i adore and think was slept on.

Furthest i've ever done is 5k in one go, crawl.

I have pretty good technique even though i'm self taught I was once 'borrowed' by an instructor giving a private lesson so her pupil could watch my arm technique which was entertaining.

I used to swim around 1500k a night for a while, but the pool became less and less friendly to lap swimmers and it became too frustrating.

im thinking abt taking lessons because my technique is horrible - ive been doing 80 minutes three nights a week and working on getting my # of laps up per session rather than setting any distance goals

lol vanity but the chlorine is kinda killing my hair

sometimes tho i just want to chill in the shallow end and ~drift~ and just feel really relaxed and care free for the entire 80 minutes. or pretend im a shark and pinch the srsbiz lap swimming dudes on their hairless legs

but the pool became less and less friendly to lap swimmers and it became too frustrating.

mrs hunter swims 3 or 4 days a week at ass-crack of dawn a.m., and i always enjoy hearing of her frustrating travails with ppl doing all manner of non lap-swim activities. even the other lap swimmers sound pretty lol, actually.

Until your technique is decent don't reinforce bad habits by swimming lots with bad technique.

Which stroke are you doing?

re poolrage

I got so annoyed in the pool it became stressful, the guards that wouldn't enforce the lanes, people with no lane etiquette, half the pool closed for training with no warning, kids lessons that kept on being extended until they took up 1/2 the pool and were scheduled during the only time I could swim.

I went to the pool user meeting to point out that there own time table said that the pool would be open for active lane swimmers at this time etc, result was they changed the timetable to remove those sessions.

arrgh

mix of frontcrawl and backstroke and some butterfly (the only stroke i think i do well tbh) yah lol thats the other reason i thought abt lessons - getting the mix of strokes and distances right. i've only been swimming on the reg for 3 weeks or so before that i was doing regular distance running

Crawl is about arms and breathing.

Watch Becky for she knows the truth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8270000/newsid_8275100/8275131.stm

Concentrate on taking your time to get the arms through the full S shape (the keyhole), reach as far forward as you can this helps you to roll your shoulders into the stroke.

Use a pull buoy to help get right shape through the water, look at how straight her body is in the water compared to the bloke.

Your breathing is key, one of the problems is normally that people who start swimming are fairly out of shape aerobically so they can't last a full stroke without gasping but as you're a distance runner you should be more able to get to a bi-lateral breathing pattern more easily, remember you only want to put your mouth a little out of the water each breath this is where you will start to realise why lanes are great to laps it's not fun breathing in a wave of water on your 50th lap.

Breathing out should be slow, controlled and out of the nose use the exhale breath to help time your pattern.

Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory.

revenge of king george

thanks for the advice tho - the breathing thing in particular is something i have to work on

my swimming instructor told me this morning that i have to buy a proper swim suit lol

I used to swim around 1500k a night for a while

!!!!

oops that should of course be 1500 meters.

what are you swimming in now?

lol board shorts

yeah get some real shorts it makes a big difference, I prefer the short shorts ones to the full on speedos generally I wear the Adidas infinitex ones until they wear out usu about 3 months

http://media.laredoute.fr/intl/products/picture/3/324156625_0001_EM_1.jpg

23-min into my workout doing good pace is good wtf honestly think the dude in the lane next 2 me is str8 fukken drowning. turns out his breast stroke looks like a cross btw a grand mal seizure and tryna get something down from a high shelf.

are you posting from underwater

23-min into my workout

http://img.labnol.org/di/waterphelps1.jpg

waterproof iphone case bro gotta make full use of my stroke counting app

doesnt seem worth it just usen it 5 minutes atta time

that sounds really dope but r u in a recliner atm

no. shoulda gone 2 michigan obv :/

im always so jealous of the rolling running thread :/

omg i just want to go swimming somewhere why are there no swimming pools anymore.
i was about to blow $$$ on joining a place because it was semi-near my house, then found that it closes at seven; at four on saturdays; and at noon on sundays.

i would create legislation suggesting that there couldn't be private pools in a town unless there were also public pools, if i were king.

I really like swimming and since I moved I have a huge pool hardly used by anyone in my apartment block so I'm getting back into it. I tried to convince myself to go every morning before leaving to the office but I have a problem with waking up so I do it at night. Which is fine but it means no sun to enjoy while swimming. However, the chemicals are just killing my skin :(

There is a beautiful pool at the rec facility where I live, you pay an annual fee and can also use sauna and weight machines or shoot baskets. They should have this everywhere, whether you live in the city or the burbs or out in the country! Had to cancel due to the fact that my schedule won't allow it right now.

I am so depressed. With this hot weather I could use a lap swim once in a while!

My neighbors have pools and I am so jealous!

going to try out the pool at Golden Lane today

I went swimming in this last week:

http://www.pondjumperscroatia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/klocke_croatia/Krka-Falls.jpg

I can't see anyone in the water

hampstead heath after work i think

(I think that picture is taken just past the line beyond which you're not allowed to swim, either that or it's ludicrously early in the morning because the place was packed)

Where is it?

It's at Krka National Park in Croatia.

Super beautiful.