Pool Hangover

Last night I had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. It was nice - the last bottle of one of my absolute favorites (a Gewurztraminer) from a lovely little winery in Door County where we often vacation. As I stumbled into bed I realized perhaps I'd had more than I thought, and when I woke up this morning with a bit of a headache that suspicion was confirmed.

For obvious reasons I was a bit slow joining the land of the living today, and so missed my 9:15 weights class. I'd planned to lift and then swim, but because I have a ton of work to do and was already running late, once I felt good enough to exercise (around 10:30 - pathetic, huh?) I decided I'd have to skip lifting and just swim.

I stepped into the pool and the part of my brain that's recently developed into a pool thermometer spiked (as my husband would say, it's my mutant power emerging). Just with one foot in the water I'd have sworn on a stack of bibles it was at least 89 degrees, and I did not change that estimate once I was fully in.

I tried hard to do my laps properly - alternating sets of my newly learned (but still comically rough) breast and backstrokes. But I had to stop every few laps just to catch my breath. My headache returned within 200 yards. I grew increasingly queasy and gave up after only 30 laps (1/2 mile). The pool gave me a bigger hangover than my actual hangover.

On my way out the manager happened to be at the desk so I asked her if she knew the pool temp today. This isn't an unusual question - the water temp is an ongoing battle between the (very few) swimmers and the arthritic water aerobics classes. She looked uncomfortable and said "yeah, I know it's really warm today.... I saw it was 89."

Because it's so often too warm and they don't seem to be able to regulate it well I can only assume there's an issue with the heater. Regardless - I thought it was cool my estimate nailed the temp exactly. (I can do the same with the hot tub - which is always several degrees above the safe limit of 104 and generally so hot I can't even put my feet in.)

I don't mind having an occassional bad workout and I totally get that tmperature preferences of the dozens of patrons who take water aerobics every day take precedence over my 1-2 weekly swims... but I do mind that the headache it gave me is sticking around and is looking impact the rest of my day.