Setting Goals
When I decided to undertake the GUE fundamentals course I didn’t know that I had to agree to a set of standard some of which I wasn’t overly comfortable in agreeing to, this is a section of one of them “I understand and agree that I have a responsibility to remain fit and not to become obese or grossly overweight”.
I had read the standards and the requirements for the course and the one section I was confident with was the swim test, I used to swim quite a lot but over the years it isn’t something I am fond of, I find repetitive lengths up and down the pool boring.
The Fundamentals standard is 275m in 14 minutes, not exactly difficult so in the few weeks before the course I went down to the gym just to make sure, I was doing the distance (11 lengths) in just under 8 minutes. So the day of the swim test on the course I left the pool a little disappointed as I think it took just over 9 minutes although I will blame Fin as I couldn’t get past him in the narrow lane 
This week I have been in the pool each morning, the first couple of days I went into the gym first and then did the required 11 lengths again no problem with my time. Yesterday I decided to see how many lengths I could do in the 14 minute standard and it was good to find I got to 18 lengths (425m) and I did 30 lengths in total which was my longest swim for ages.
Today I took it a little further and I have decided to concentrate on my swimming, again I did the 18 lengths in the time and then went on to do sets of 6 lengths in 4.15, 4.16, 4.17 and the final set at 4.20. I took about a minute rests between sets and before I had realised I had done 42 lengths or 1050m :)
I have now found something to work on and my daily routine will start with swimming. I wasn’t comfortable with agreeing to the standards but it has now given me the determindation to at least have a crack at improving my fitness.
