17Jul12

Tough and fun swim today
Got to the ocean a bit later than expected.  I slept in then spent half the day with my girls playing at the beach.  After a good long nap, we all headed back to the beach at 1700.  I wanted to do 2 miles today.  I headed north and knew I was getting a decent push.  When I got to the water tower which is pretty much exactly 1/2 mile away, I turned around.  I started to do some good long strokes with decent effort.  After 100 strokes, I looked up and realized I had not moved!  I put my head down and did a few hundred more strokes.  This time I realized I was going backwards!  OK, now I know that the current is a minimum of 1.5 to 2 knots.  I decided to just do 2000 strokes with some real effort and if I was still nowhere near the end, I'd just get out and count my swim good by stroke count and time in instead of actual point to point distance.  After 1000 strokes, I was making progress.  VERY slow progress but moving non the less.  I then really focused on very strong pulls and keeping up a fast arm turnover pace.  I started to get a bit tired but I could tell I was moving at a decent pace now.  I got back to my wife and kids and headed in.  I had been in for about 50 minutes and had barely gone over a mile.  LOL  I wanted to do a bit more for time and not worry about distance.  I did more going against the current at first then with the current back. 
When I was done,  I had been in well over an hour and had 1.55 actual miles.
I think I'm going to swim for time this week instead of worrying about actual distance.  If I am in for 3 hours and only log 4 miles, by stroke count, it would equal 6 miles or more but the current does fun things.  It was GREAT swimming today and I even got the hell knocked out of me by a surprise sandbar wave I didn't see.  Jellyfish stings were plenty but not that bad.
1.55 miles OW ....but about 1h 15m actual swimming time.