Channelling A Challenging Challenge!

First of all, Dear self:
Stop being a crankypants!



My weight has popped back up a little, ~2 pounds or so, which is normal for me. Lose a bunch, bounce back a little, plateau, drop, repeat. But of course I'm being a mental crybaby about it the last few days.

So anyway DEAR ME: I went back and counted. Starting SP on June 23, it has been 28 weeks. There were at least 4 weeks you weren't really "doing it" - not really putting full effort into all the food & fitness stuff. So let's count "effort" weeks only:

43 lbs/ 24 weeks = 1.79 pounds per week lost.

This is SENSATIONAL. Remember being on WW and struggling and failing to barely lose 0.5 pounds in a week? QUIT YOUR WHINING, ME.

Even if you count "bounced back up" weight, 40/24 = 1.67 pounds per week. EVEN if you count all 28 weeks, it's still near or over a pound and a half a week lost.
So Oh boo hoo, crybaby. Poor you. You lost an almost-not-measurable amount less than the maximum possible 2 pounds per week. Wow your life is hard. Wait, let me get the world's smallest violin and play My Heart Pumps Purple Pee For You.

Cram it and eat your salad.




ANYWAY, now that THAT is out of the way....

Clearly I need a new challenge to focus on and get my mind off the scale and my wretched impatience.

So here I go, throwing down with myself again.

Check it out: Thanks to the generosity of gorgeous and intelligent people who love me, I am able to do the challenge I MOST want to do, while it may not be the challenge I most NEED to do. Let me 'splain.

I thought of two challenges, back in December, that I could do for January. One was a strength training challenge, which needs rules and a fun quirky name and me not to be like BORRRINNGGGG, and let's face it I DO need to do more strength training, but the other one is just SO MUCH MORE FUNNNNN.

My loving husband bought me a shiny new toy for Christmas: a lap counter. It looks like a baby stopwatch on a ring, with only one button, which you click to count. I will use this to count laps when I swim! Because as I learned this morning, trying to remember what lap I'm on while swimming takes way more brain power than I have at 6am. I would probably drown without this thing.

My awesome MIL gave me some pool monies for Christmas! THANK YOU!

And my awesome mom gave me some of her inheritance from her cousin (RIP Bob, your mad guitar stylings will be missed.) also for Pool Monies. And I have a bit of savings as well, because I have been Very Good lately.

So I am now the proud owner of a lap counter AND a gym membership to a place that HAS A POOL.

In a half hour or so, thanks to online shopping I will be the proud owner of a Smaller Bathing Suit as well.

Did you know if you lose over 40 pounds, you will look great in your bathing suit? You will. While it is dry. And when it gets wet and you are moving forward quickly it will come right off. HEE. Thankfully I am also the proud owner of a now-also- kind-of-too- big swim bra so when the front of my suit peels down I'm not at all indecent. But still. HEE!!

(If you are wondering, a swim bra is just what it sounds like: an underwire bra made of bathing suit material with plastic instead of metal clasps. If you are well endowed and love swimming, you NEED to invest in one of these for summer! It is the best $50 I have EVER spent, EVER. I got the matching "parts" too, but mostly I just wear it under any regular old tank suit.)

Whatever do you suppose I shall DOOOO WITH ALL THESE SWIMMING RELATED RICHES???

BAM!:





That's right. I'm going to Swim The English Channel!!!



Don't be insane, I'm not going to REALLY swim the ACTUAL channel.... I'm not THAT good.

Did you know more people have climbed Mount Everest than have swum the English Channel???

Sounds challenging to me!

My goal is to swim a total of 21 miles (distance across the Strait of Dover, and the distance typically swum in attempts, from what I've found online) by March 1, 2013.

My pool (MY POOL!) is 49' long, so a lap is 98'. That means I need to swim:

21*5280/98 = 1132 laps, between this morning and March 1, 2013.

I was originally going to do it in a month, but HAHAHAHAHAHA, no. I decided to be fun it should be challenging but achievable, and 4 weeks = insane.

So I will take 8 weeks, -ish, and swim the English Channel by March 1.

The channel water was 11.2 C, 52.1 F this morning (thank you Met Office website, hee hee.) Not sure of the pool temperature but I bet a lot warmer!

This morning I did 30 laps; just over half a mile. Only 20.5 to go!




At the very least I'll do weekly mileage updates.

In other news, I reset my calories burned to reflect all this swimming I'm going to be doing, and moved my goal date out another 10 days (November 2013) because my weight is still above/not meeting the "goal" line.

Now as expected SP is telling me to eat more; I'm going to see how this week goes with food and weight loss and hopefully that will be good. I've been consistent with my calories eaten, except for holiday blips, but slowly burning more and more, so I'm wondering if that made my body go "WHAT THE HECK???" We shall see. The important thing will be to get my new additional calories from healthy stuff, NOT ice cream and cookies. haha.

Off to have lunch!