It’s my 200^th swim. I wish I was doing something special to mark the occasion, but it kind of snuck up on me and today is Adult Swim, so that is what I’m doing. For my 100^th swim, I had Covid and swam alone in the San Francisco Bay at dawn, so this beats that anyway (in so far as I am healthy—my 100^th was a pretty magical swim in other ways). 

I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything on purpose for two hundred straight days and it feels good to know I’m capable of it. Meditation, running, walking 10,000 steps, writing in my journal, sleeping 8 hours–there have been many things I’ve set out to do daily but failed somewhere along the way (though journaling is pretty dang close). I miss a day and then decide the whole thing is too much pressure and set it aside. But this? Somehow I’ve made it to 200. 

Wanting to do something symbolic to commemorate it, I decided to swim 2,200 during Adult Swim. Most Adult Swim workouts are 2,000 meters. This year, for the first time, I’m managing to complete them, but it’s not always easy and sometimes I start early and leave late. So I figured 2,200 would be a nice challenge. I also decided just to do the whole thing front crawl because if I started messing around with other strokes, drills, kicks, and pulls, I figured I’d never finish. 

I swam hard and steady. I didn’t stop to chat at the wall or slow way down to adjust my goggles (well I did adjust them once). I just kept swimming; through the boredom and the feeling tired, through the wondering how much time had passed and who was that who just arrived? I swam and swam and as I swam I thought about how one of the many things this year of swimming is teaching me is how to just hunker down and do the thing I want to do. To keep going; keep trucking along; keep on keeping on. 

As it turned out, I finished my 2,200 in 52 minutes; much faster than the hour plus I was expecting. Another thing I learned today is that maybe I struggle to complete 2,000 in the one hour of Adult Swim because I’m spending too much time at the wall chatting with the charming coaches (that and all the kicking drills).  

Anyway, that’s 200 swims (and perhaps even more remarkable: 200 blog posts) in the bag and I’m feeling pretty great about it.