Math is hard when swimming
Apparently, math is hard. So said 1994 Barbie and so I found out on Monday when attempting to swim what I thought was a mile. I gave myself an F+ on math. Why an F+, you ask? Well, it stems from the following conversation we had with our son while driving:
Christopher: Do you know what it means when you get an F+?
Us: What?
Christopher: I guess it means the only thing you are good at is Failing.
Well, it turns out I am good a failing math while swimming. Our neighborhood pool is a Jr. Olympic size, which means it is 25 meters long, so going down and back is 50 meters. 1600 meters are roughly in a mile, so that gives us : 1600 meters / 50 = 32. So to swim a mile in our pool you’d need to go down and back 32 times.
Somehow while swimming I transposed the 16 from 1600 and used that instead of the 32. So when I erroneously reported that I swam a mile in 22:08, in fact I had only swum a half-mile. So while I was busy having delusions of grandeur that I was already where I needed to be for the upcoming Ironman swim, I was in fact nowhere close.
Some basic extrapolation (and feel free to check my math on this as I’ve shown I can’t be trusted), would give me a rough time of 110 minutes for the Ironman swim, or 1 hour and 50 minutes. Which is far off of the 1 hour and 15 minutes I did in Florida. I’ll chalk up the difference to lack of a wet suit for now.
Ouch, so I guess I need to hit the pool again sometime soon.
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[…] Sarabeth wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptSo said 1994 Barbie and so I found out on Monday when attempting to swim what I thought was a mile. I gave myself an F+ on math. Why an F+ you ask? Well it stems from the following conversation we had with our son while driving: … […]
Wow, I thought you were really fast in the original post.
Jr. Olympic pools can be either 25 meters or yards. If it’s yards, you’ll have to do 71 lengths/36 laps to get a mile in (it’s a bit over a mile).
Sadly Jane, I’m just bad at math when in the water. Normally I am good at math. Maybe I was just being delusional.
Oh well, I’ll get back in the water next week after the double.
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