Get your meter out of my yard...

...and stay off the lawn, you stinkin' kids!

Now what was I talking about? That's right - I swam my first "test" time trial for the Heart of the Valley Triathlon yesterday: 12:23 for 750 meters. Not bad, although I'm hoping to swim it around 11:30 in the actual tri.

Anyhoo...meters? As you may recall, or not depending on your drink of choice, I grew up swimming meters. But trying to think back, I can't recall swimming in a single 50-meter pool since I swam my last year on the Wapato Swim Team (gulp...24 years ago!). Let's see:

-Dixon? Yards.
-Osborne Aquatic Center? Well, apparently it can be meters, but they always have the barrier (they call it the "bulkhead") in the middle of the pool, so I think it's usually about 25 yards.
-Arne Hanna Aquatic Center (Bellingham)? Yards.
-Bellingham Athletic Center? This is a good one - feet! I think it was 50 feet...in a dark, little cave...five good strokes and you were done with the lap.

I don't know, I'm sure there's more, but the point is every pool I've been in since high school has been yards, not meters. So to prepare for the HOTV, which has a 750 meter swim, I figured I'd have to swim about 30 laps in the Dixon pool. I mean, yards...meters...what's the difference?

Quite a bit, actually. After heading to one of those fancy online conversion calculators, I realized I'd have to swim about 33 laps at Dixon to get to 750 meters! Yowza.

So don't skimp on the swim practice. If you're doing the HOTV, if the extra 250 yards don't get you, the meters will.

The map of countries that DON'T use the metric system is from Mr. Malley through wikimedia. Thanks.