Jogging or walking is a common exercise for many adults.
Walt and Mary Ann Regehr take a different approach during the summer by swimming a mile per day.
If jogging, one mile takes about 10 minutes. Swimming that same distance takes exponentially longer because it’s much harder to move in water than on land. A mile at the recreation pool is 64 lengths and will take about 50 minutes.
“If we go really fast, it can be 47 minutes, but that’s about as fast as we go,” Mary Ann, 58, said jokingly.
Even increasing their mile time by just three minutes requires much more work.
“Forty-seven minutes requires a lot of huffin’ and puffin’,” Walt, 63, said. “You don’t start at that. Each summer the first week or two, is not so much in strength for the arms and the legs, but it’s lung power and building the lungs back up. Once you build the lungs back up, then you can really start to push yourself more.”
The Regehrs have been swimming since they grew up in Iola.
“We’ve swam since we were kids, and in the summer you don’t notice the sweating when you’re swimming,” Mary Ann said.
According to Walt, they have spent a lot of time by the water. The couple has been married for 39 years and he is retired Air Force. When in the service, they would spend a lot of time in Florida.
“We’d go visit the Gulf and different things,” Walt said. “So, we’ve always been involved with water in one way or another growing up. It’s just a great activity around this area with the pool, and especially with the adult swim times.”
This summer they reached the mile distance earlier than usual. Typically, they build up their stamina by swimming one kilometer — about 40 laps — for a few weeks. Walt had some stitches in his leg, so he couldn’t start swimming until a couple weeks later than normal. Once he could, he decided to just try for the mile.
“I think we’ve been doing it enough years now, that we kind of get the lung power back quicker,” Walt said. “So, we’ve just been into the mile ever since, every day we can get in there.”
One mile is equal to 1.6 kilometers. A mile is essentially 2,000 feet longer than one kilometer. Last year they kept track of how many miles they had swam, and it was equivlent to over 40 miles.
The Regehrs complete their swimming during the adult swim time from noon to 1 p.m. at the pool. They have been swimming each summer since they moved back to Iola in 1997.
Local couple rack up the miles at rec pool
