i can only count to eleventy.
Written by patty on August 6th, 2009He is a CPA.
And I have an MBA, having earned an A- in statistics only by the grace of the bell curve. I didn’t fare quite so well in Finance. But I thought I could count. And I was sure he could.
Neither of us has had coffee yet. We’ve finished the warmup. It’s 6:12 am.
We usually swim in sets of 5 or 10. Easy to count, easy to remember. 10×100, 5×200, 6×75 plus an extra 50 to make it to 500.
Our brains turn soggy as we go from end to end, counting the strokes, counting the laps, translating into yards (or meters) and how-many-til-it’s-over.
Well, mine does, anyway.
“You’re not going to like this… let’s do 20×50,” I suggest. Mostly because I can’t fathom doing distance today. He agrees. We agree on stroke (freestyle on evens, stroke on odds) and intervals, and we start.
It’s early. No coffee yet.
I try using the lane line as an abacus, but the disks float back together as we splash our way through the flip turns.
He tolerates my frequent absences, and I understand his insistence that workouts start on time. His change in commute moved the swim from 5:30 to 6:00 am, 30 minutes that make difference. We’ve discussed everything between sets: jobs, parenting, losses, triumphs, sports, movies, diet, neighbors, death, birth.
But we’ve always managed to count.
Somewhere around 50 #17, we lose track.
“That’s it,” he says.
“No, one more,” I insist.
We do another. And confer. Was that 18? 20? We count. We recount. We look at the clock. Stumped.
Lacking any empirical evidence, we do a few more. And carry on with the workout.
At 10 am, I get the first email. “I’m still not sure if we did 18, 20, or 24.”
We consider the key criterion for anyone we recruit to join us at 6 am: the ability to count to 20.
Tomorrow, I’m bringing 20 pennies. And reconsidering my position on pre-swim coffee.
6
PM
Brains are not required to count!
That is the issue, but coffee might help.
Whitemist´s last blog ..I remeber
7
AM
For a small fee …
always home and uncool´s last blog ..Weight For It
7
PM
wait? no one said i had to count in the morning? hell, i can barely speak.
ms picket to you´s last blog ..Can You See Me Now?
9
PM
It’s because the counting gets so boring while you carry out the task of swimming. There’s so many others things to get caught up in. Counting to 20 is simple but hardly engaging. Especially that early in the morning.
Ricardo´s last blog ..So I Awoke to This on My Bed