Boredom

Boredom. A big part of my longer running and biking workouts and always part of my swimming workouts.  I did another swim workout yesterday (it was too cold and too late for a run and my bike is still in the shop getting aero bars put on), and after my 1000m warm-up, I was already ready to get out of the pool!  At least when I run, I can ramp up the tunes and literally think of nothing...in fact, I'm pretty sure I black out for the middle 50 minutes of all my runs, which is probably a good thing after all the thinking I'm told I should be doing for medical school.  Back to swimming.  While I swim, I can't seem to shake this boredom.  I can't listen to music and I can't seem to reach the same state of not thinking that I get when running.  This is actually probably a good thing because if I did reach this state while swimming, the lifeguards would need to jump into the pool and rescue me from the bottom. It isn't so bad when I swim with my sister because, at least in between sets, I can talk with her and she can give me tips on how to improve my technique.

So, the big question every time I go swimming by myself is "what am I going to think about while swimming today?" At first I tried reviewing what I was learning in school in my head.  I quickly realized that that wouldn't work for multiple reasons. 1. I actually really didn't want to think about those things while I worked out. Working out is one of the few things I do to escape school! 2. I can't fact check myself. What if I'm just reinforcing the wrong concept?  3. It was often just depressing to realize how much I don't know haha.

For those of you who suffer from boredom as much as I do, I've found that doing different workouts really helps, as well as doing timed sets.  Putting in some repeat hundreds on an interval usually work really well to spice up my swim workout.  100s are long enough to be painful, but short enough that I can sprint the whole 100. The perfect combo, and perfect jog to my otherwise tedious swim workouts. Additionally, this works both in and out of the pool.  Shake up your running workouts with some track workouts!

For those curious, my swim workout was:
1000m warm-up
2x (2x100 sprints on an interval, 150 kick, 200 IM, 150 pull, 2x100 sprints on the same interval)
warmdown (I only did 200)
total: 3000m