So Hungry I Could Eat...a Duck?

It was 6:30am and there was just me and two rubber duckies in the pool.

Apparently Monday, January 2nd at the crack of dawn is not a popular time to swim.  I thought there might be a slew of new years resolution swimmers but I had the entire pool to myself - well except for the two little yellow ducks floating in the lane beside me.  Leftover from the family swim the day before I expect.

Three lifeguards were there in case I ran into some serious trouble. No pressure at all as three pairs of eyes watched me swim back and forth and back and forth.

I let myself sleep in until 6am because, well, because I was tired and I am on vacation after all.  Thirty minutes is thirty minutes.

I woke up with a blood sugar of 7.4 so I didn't eat anything.  I just pulled on my bathing suit, my warm fuzzy sweatshirt and comfy pants and padded over to the pool.  When I got there and found myself alone I figured I had better look lively.

I swam the first twenty lengths and struggled a lot with my energy and my breathing.  It dawned on me after a while that perhaps my iron is low.  I struggle with low iron and one of my tricks is to make a breakfast shake every day with Vega powder.  It's pretty high in iron and helps keep me in a good range.  I haven't had my shake once since my vacation started.  Instead, I've been enjoying my Dorset cereal with a banana and a ridiculous amount of pomegranate seeds on top.  It's super tasty but not exactly iron rich. Other than the steak I had the night before, I haven't eaten much red meat in the past few weeks either.  Or spinach.  Or cream of wheat.  Uh oh.

I told myself to take an iron pill when I got home and, in the meantime, suck it up.

Twenty more lengths and my energy seemed to pick up and my breathing seemed to settle.

When I hit 76 lengths (I remember it being that exact number) I realized that I wasn't quite ready to stop yet.  I had a bit more left in me.  Plus, not having to work this week, I also had a bit more time.

So apparently this was the day I was going to try my hand at swimming 2.5k (100 lengths).

I swam 82.  Felt ok.  84 - still good.  86 - still good?  By 88 I was fading. Thankfully I don't really like the number 9.  So the thought of swimming any number of lengths beginning with a 9 was not appealing.  It was going to be 88 or 100.

Being the stubborn lass that I am I carried on.  It wasn't elegant but I did manage to swim all 100 lengths of the pool.  In exactly one hour.

I was pretty exhausted by the end and was wishing that I had eaten a few dates and taken some insulin before my swim.  The blood sugar was ok (9.3) but I was starving.

Ravenous.

Famished.

Those rubber duckies were looking pretty tasty...