Probably around a year ago, I got fed up with being lazy and out of shape, and decided that I’d try to do something about that. A long, long time ago I swam competitively (seriously, I started back when I was able to express my age using only my fingers, and gave it up not long after I had to include a toe or two), and since the present-day me hates running, weightlifting, and most other forms of cardiovascular torture, I figured that trying to get back into swimming might be a bit more preferable. So a friend and I started trying to get to our neighborhood pool once or twice a week, but between the pool’s odd hours, my screwy schedule, his twin sons, and a Boston winter that was incompatible with human life much less with walking a half a mile to the pool, we never seemed to get into a sustainable rhythm, and gave it up entirely after just a few months.

About three or four months ago, I exploited a day in which I was again feeling particularly lazy and out of shape to motivate me to do something about that, and after a few emails I found a gym nearby that allows employees of the medical center to join up and use their indoor pool. It took me a few more weeks to get off my ass and join, but I finally dove back into the pool last month in an effort to find an exercise rhythm that worked for me. I’m happy to say now that I’ve kept with it thus far, and when I updated my unbelievably geeky Excel swimming spreadsheet today, I realized that I surpassed an in-pool marathon this past Tuesday. That’s oddly exciting to me, and I hope that I’m able to stick with this long enough to realize more and more weird little milestones like that, all in the name of keeping healthy and staying in shape.