Swimming in circles...

I made a decison upon coming to Saudi that the relative lack of alcohol and fast food (I found out since that you can get it everywhere here - (McDonalds, Burger King, Hardee's, Chili's, Friday's, Applebee's and KFC) would lend itself well to losing weight. After settling in for a week and getting over some minor jetlag I started my work out regimen. This would encompass running and swimming on alternate days of the week. Our work week here starts on Saturday so I figured I would jog on Saturday morning (5:45am - it's nice and cool) and swim after school on Sunday and then rotate from there on out.

Running along the beach in the early morning is fantastic. It is usually only in the upper 80's and the humidity has not yet started come up. The sun is just coming up over the gulf and there are these really cool green parrots that feed beneath a palm tree along the beach path. One of these days I am going to take pictures.

My first day of swimming was quite interesting. First of all I had to borrow goggles from Jack as I can't drive outside of our community until I get my permanent residency papers. Jack's goggles are very cool in that they have these nasty holgraphic sharks on the lenses. So everytime you move your head the shark looks like it is coming to eat you. I arrived at the pool and jumped into the swimming lane where there was a hand full of adults swimming slowly along. I thought "This is great. Everyone is swimming nice and slow!" This was my first time swimming for excercise since my days at LaSalle High School in old Mr. Farrell's swim class. So I get in and swim 1 lap feeling pretty good about myself. As I get to the end of the lap all the people who were swimming slowly are waiting for me wearing big smiles and speedo bathing suits. "Hi! We're the health and fitness club. Glad you decided to come out and join us." Oh crap. I tried to explain to them that I had spent the month before coming to Saudi trying (successfully) to consume the years worth of cheesesteaks and beer I would miss living abroad and that I really didn't think I should workout with them. They would have none of it and before I knew it the leader of this group was rattling off distances and directions and the others were all falling in behind him. "Ok we are going to do 5 freestyle at warm-up pace. One lap both arms and one with just your left. Ready go!" What!!! I just want to swim some laps. Before I could object they were swimming away. Ok. I can do this. I knew I was in trouble when I reached the end of the first 50 meters and they were all doing the olympic flip turn and shooting off in the other direction. I tried it and came up gagging with mass amounts of water up my nose. Damn.

Did you know that when some people try to swim a lap with only one arm they will swim in a circle? I do now. I kept hitting the plastic doughnut things on the lane divider. (Side note: I really, really miss Dunkin Donuts!! Their coffee was so sweet and the jelly doughnuts were so jelly-ee.) I had only planned on swimming for a half an hour each day so after trying real hard not to look like a total fool and get out of this alive I was going to bail. Their warm up took half an hour and they seemed disappointed when I told them I had to go and could not stick around for more fun. I was dizzy and breathing heavy and they were all giving me this weird look of concern when I realized that I was standing there with these atheletes ( I have since found out one of these people there won their age group in the Phoenix triatholon) wearing Jack's shark goggles - everytime I moved my head, the sharks flashed across the lanes. Yes, in the end no matter how hard I tried, I looked like a fool standing there amongst these triatheletes in my flowered board shorts and shark goggles that I borrowed from my six year old. Welcome to Aramco.