Swim the Hudson River? Not Me!

The good folks at the Y try really hard to motivate the members towards healthful lifestyles. They offer an array of classes - everything from ballet to spinning to yoga. They have a pretty impressive array of equipment - stability balls, free weights, computerized strength machine, treadmills, recumbent bikes, elliptical machines - you name it.

And to further keep you motivated and on track, they have Fitlinxx, ( http://fitlinxx.com/brand.htm ) a really cool computerized system that is hooked into most of the strength machines and automatically keeps track of every pound and every rep of every exercise you do. You can keep track of all the exercise you do off the system, too, like running, biking, even shoveling snow by hand, and enter it on-line. To top it all off, you earn Fit Points for everything you do. Keep accumulating Fit Points, move up the color bars on the graph. After one year, I am in the Red Level (that took 50,000 points ) and 19% of the way to the Brown Level ( 75,000 points ). At this rate, I have a shot at making the top level (Platinum, 500,000 points) about 5 years after I move into the Continuing Care Faciliy, and just before I shuffle off this mortal coil (Hamlet, I think.

But the folks at the Y, just like the folks at the NYS Lottery, know that they have to keep changing it up if they want the consumers to keep buying, or in this case, buying into, the product. For instance, this month, if you take 15 classes before the end of the month, you qualify for a free "prize"! Free being a relative term, because you most certainly will pay with time, sweat and a bunch of sore muscles.

Which brings me to Swimming the Hudson River. No, not the actual Hudson River, but the virtual Hudson River. The idea is to log every lap you swim, yard by yard, mile by mile, until you swim 150 miles, the length of the Hudson River. A bunch of people I know have signed up and have been swimming pretty diligently towards that pretty worthy goal.

Not me, though. I know what you're thinking: "How come a driven, compulsive, Type- A, goal-driven neurotic like me isn't all over this challenge?" Because I figured out what it means:
1760 yards to a mile times 150 miles = 264,000 yards.

264,000 yards divided by 50 yards to a lap = 5,280 Laps.

5,280 laps divided by one minute per lap divided by 60 minutes per hour = 88 hours.

88 hours divided by 2 hours per week = 44 weeks.

In other word, to reach this goal, I would have to swim for one hour, twice a week for ten months! That would be in addition to the running, biking, lifting and competing I will need to do to complete the tri's and 5 K's I have on the agenda for this year. Not to mention work and the endless "honey-do" list.

Nope - can't do it - Won't do it. Which just goes to show, even for me, there are "lenghts" to which I won't go.