One Hour Swim and Smothered Pork Chops

On Sunday, I did the Team New York Aquatics One Hour Swim.  The event is exactly what it sounds like...you have an hour to swim as much as you can.  It's all in a pool, and you just keep going, back and forth and back and forth.

I had set myself a goal of doing 3000 yards for the hour.  I had no idea if this was realistic or not, it just seemed like a nice round number.  It meant sustaining 60-second 50s for the whole hour.  I knew I was able to swim that fast for 200-yard intervals, but was really nervous about having to do it for an hour.

Before the swim started, we had about 5 minutes to warm up in our lane. Each of our lanes were divided into two.  I shared my lane with a nice woman whose name I forgot.  On my second warmup lap, I crashed into her.  It wasn't just a bump--my right arm locked onto her right arm and we became stuck to each other.  Then she yelled at me, in front of everyone at the pool.  I was so humiliated.  And I knew then and there that this swim was gonna be a sh-tshow.

Twenty seconds before the swim started, I noticed that just about every other swimmer kept a bottle of water  on the deck.  I hadn't even thought to bring water.  And I was already a little dehydrated from a night of karaoke and dancing Saturday night.  This was going to be a disaster.

My first lap, I tried to keep up with the lady in my lane (46 seconds).  That was way too fast.  So I slowed down the second and third laps (51, 55).  By the fourth lap I was tired.  But after the first six or seven laps, I pretty much settled into a groove where I was between 58-61 seconds for the rest of the hour.  One exception was at the halfway point, where I decided to do one lap of breast stroke to loosen up my arms (71 seconds, followed by two fast 56 second laps of freestyle).

Peter McGrane was standing on the deck, being a great cheerleader.  Many, many, many times when I got to the wall, I heard "GO DAVE LIN!" which definitely encouraged me to keep going.  As my mind was wandering through all those laps, I contemplated asking him to fetch me a cup of water, but didn't want to lose the time.  But then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and the more I thought about it, the thirstier I became.

I stayed relatively on my side of the lane pretty much the whole time.  Two times I bumped against the the lady, but they were both minor.  I was trying to hug the lane divider the whole time, and I'm actually quite surprised that I didn't jam my fingers into it--something that I do with quite some frequency.

After about 45 minutes, I started getting a little bored.  Like that feeling you get when you're running on a treadmill and just waiting for it to end.  I found myself looking at the clock after every lap to see how much more time I had left.  I felt fine physically, but it was just a long time to swim.

Finally, I was in the last few minutes.  I was really happy that I was able to make it the whole hour.  And my very last lap was actually one of my fastest laps, 55 seconds.  And then they called time...  and I was so, so happy I was done.  The longest I've ever swam continuously in my life.  It was so great to be finished.

But my real happiness didn't come until a few minutes later, when I was able to track down my timing sheet.  It turned out, I made my goal of 3000 yards!!  In fact, I had JUST BARELY made it, with 3040--not even a single lap to spare.  Wow!  I was elated.  It was such a great feeling to know that I had done exactly what I had set out to do, to have succeeded in reaching my goal.  It also made me realize how far I've gone in swimming over the past year or so.  Just a year and a half ago, I had my disastrous Metroman swim, where I was second to last out of 190 finishers.  And now, I can go 3000 yards without a problem!

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As you loyal readers of the blog may have noticed, I've become quite a big fan of Southern/soul food (see here, here and here).  So when Jonathan came over for dinner the other night, I was happy to get to test out a new recipe on a real Southerner.  He wanted pork, so I decided to make some tasty smothered pork chops.  Yummmmm....

I cook pork pretty frequently, but I just about always make it Asian.  And it's usually mixed in with a bunch of vegetables, never just a big hunk of meat.  When I do buy pork chops, it's usually the thin variety, which I think is a better vehicle for delicious Asiany marinades.

But this time I got 1" thick chops, better for dredging, frying, and covering in creamy gravy.  Mmmm....   Since this was my first time making smothered pork chops, I decided to loosely follow Tyler Florence's recipe.  Except Jonathan used the wrong pepper mill and put in ground Sichuan peppercorns instead of black pepper, haha.  

They came out pretty good, I have to say, and only took about 12 minutes to make in my cast iron skillet.  I even liked the slight tingliness of the Sicuan peppercorns.  :-)

My go-to Southern side dishes are always collard greens and sweet potatoes, since they're easy and pretty healthy.  But I think I need to branch out into other things.  Still, they came out pretty tasty this time...  I used smoked pork neck bones (very cheap at Fairway!) to flavor the collards.

Jonathan said all three dishes tasted just like back home (except his grandmother would have put an extra stick of butter in everything).  I took that as a great compliment.  Not bad for an Asian guy in New York City.