Swim Ari Swim...Whoo Hoo!

I can attest that you don't die of heat exhaustion by sitting poolside for an hour in 109 degree weather. I did it and I’m still alive to tell about it.

As I mentioned before Ari had her first ever swim-a-thon yesterday and she was amazing. It was so hot they were spraying down all the swimmers with a hose when they got to our end of the pool (hey what about all us lap counters who aren’t in the water staying at least somewhat cool?)

Ok, ok, I know back to Ari and her swimming. They had to swim as many laps as they could in one hour and since the most laps Ari had over swum before at one time was 4 (and she was tired after that) I didn't figure she would get more than 20 maybe 25 laps before she was just too tired to go anymore. She blew me away, she swam exactly 50 laps! Here’s how it went down:

And she’s off, look at her go. That’s an awfully strong pace for her to try and keep up for an hour. I think she’s going to have to slow it down and settle into a groove if she’s wants to have any endurance left for the second half of this swim-a-thon.


It’s fifteen minutes in and Ari is at 15 laps and looking very tired. A lap a minute…can she continue with this pace?

It’s been a half hour and Ari is stopped at the side of the pool. She looks exhausted and she is only half way through with her time. How will she go on?


I think Ari might be done! It’s 45 minutes in and her breaks on the wall keep getting longer and longer. Will she quit? Will she end now with 40 laps under her belt? 40 laps is nothing to sneeze at, the average for her age is between 40 and 60 laps so at least she got to 40 right? Oh no, she’s not going to stop now, she has fifteen more minutes to go and she’s no slacker!


There are 2 minutes left and she had two laps to go to get to 50 laps. (I went to the edge of the pool and told her how close she was to 50 laps and encouraged her to swim hard and swim fast) She went for it and swam hard, go Ari, go…Yes!!! She made it, 1 hour and fifty laps later she reached a huge accomplishment. Good job Ari!




Because she did so well we told her we'd take her to dinner where she wanted to go (within reason) and she choose In-and-Out. I hate in and out, but it was her reward so I sucked it up it wasn't too bad this time! Check here to see a little about my distain for In-and-Out. People swear by this place and drive far distances to get there, I just don't get it. It’s not only the raw burgers either, their fries taste like they’ve been freeze dried or something before they rehydrated them to fry them up. They swear they use fresh potatoes, but come on, I’m from Idaho, I know my potatoes and those are nothing of the sort, but I digress. Good job Ars(my nickname for Ari, sounds like the plural form of the letter R) for a trying so hard and accomplishing so much. You did awesome!