Bukit Jalil Aquatics does not have pool tiles...

So what goes through your mind when doing long swims?

For my solo long runs, I have many issues sorted out, and plans planned. Better when running without music, running through the still of the morning while figuring how to butter my wife to cook me pasta after pasta, without sounding like a broken record comes almost naturally to me.

So, solo swims?

My mind was half filled up with keeping scores of laps after laps. That was a whopping 80 laps, I had to break up my counts every 100metre. The other half was enjoying the warm section of the pool where the sun peeked inside the tensile-covered pool area. It was really warm outside, and the piercing sun on lane 4 - lane 8 alongside the other solo swimmers doing laps. Suddenly the stiff neck from the long drive from J.B. was lifted. I was buoyant in the chlorine-filled pool.

It is amazing to me to be in the pool and rotor-ing my arms for 1 hour plus. I am sure any athletes out there would say that it was nothing, but this was an achievement in itself. I remembered how jubilant I was doing my first non-stop 2000m in mid 2010 - that was freaking awesome!

And to break that with a night swimming of 3000m 2 weeks ago, and now - feels like I am doing a P.O.S. for Kapas-Marang Swimathon! Coming out of the pool feeling fresh is, well, refreshing.

Ooops, wait..... wait, WAIT, I said...

No, I do not intend to swim solo in the open South China Sea for 6.5k.

So, OK, I should detest for my self-proclaimed status as swimming-pool-spinster. Ah, what the heck... 

I have yet to master how to think and sort myself out in the pool, not without missing the counting of laps, similarly if I were to swim in the open sea, I'd be more preoccupied to freaking out if something happened to me, than be totally calm and swim free.

The journey is still far. 

But I wonder what people do beyond a certain swim distance? Say, once we exceed 6000m, do we do a 10k swim on Saturday mornings, still? Seems that swimming is not directly comprehensible as runs and rides, where mileage is key, to go further, to go faster. Swim just asks for the endurance sans the distance. 

Nice?