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January 10, 2008
Masters Swim! and More...
It is raining cats and dogs outside right now! (just thought you might like to know that) Where do you suppose that saying came from anyway?
This morning when I woke up I was pretty excited because it's Masters Swim! day! Actually, what really happened when I first woke up was that I groaned. Because I had one of those "wake up in what you THINK is the middle of the night when you THINK you have about 3 more hours to sleep only to find out that your alarm is really about to go off in 3 minutes" kind of mornings. I HATE that. But once I recovered from that trauma and I remembered this morning was masters practice, things brightened considerably.
Beyond swimming some great workouts with really great people, I also love masters practice because it takes me 25 minutes to drive into the city vs 50 minutes. That's the difference between 5:15 am and 8:15 am I suppose.
Regardless, today's workout was geared towards the mile swim race we all have coming up! I haven't mentioned it recently because I thought I might start receiving some nasty comments from talking too much about it, but my 1650 swim race is fast approaching and I'm getting very excited about it! Today we did 24x100 on a comfortable interval (1:45) varying speeds between somewhat slower than mile pace, mile pace and somewhat faster than mile pace. It was pretty entertaining to see how little concept I have of pace in the pool. Well, I actually didn't do too badly - I was just consistently too fast. Too fast on the slow ones, too fast on the pace ones and too fast on the fast ones. I hope that doesn't mean I have to swim my mile faster! :)
I choose 1:25 as my mile pace because I would be quite thrilled if I could swim between 23 and 23:30 at this time of year. 1:25 pace felt too easy today but then again without the 20 second rest after each 100 I might be changing my tune. :) Regardless, it was a great workout to learn some pacing. And it got me really even more excited for my very first swim meet!
Moving right along, work was somewhat hectic today. Several people in our department called off, one came into work but then went directly to the ER for some bad abdominal pain (she is okay) and one left early. That left some gaps to be filled if you know what I mean. We got er done though and I really didn't even have to leave too late. I did get to talk with a man who will very soon die from cancer. The surgeons basically opened him up, found cancer everywhere, and then closed him right back up. Nothing they could do. And although it's patients like this that sometimes make my heart ache, it's also one reason why I really do love my job. Because that particular man (only 42 years old) choose to have a good outlook about the whole situation. He choose to be positive instead of feeling sorry for the hand he was dealt. Not everyone gets to witness that kind of spirit and bravery in their job. We think we are brave for doing these long swim, bike, run races and pushing our bodies to the limit. But something much more brave than that is facing cancer with a smile on your face. And I feel very blessed to be reminded of that almost daily.
Okay...got a little off track there...
After work I headed back home to find one crazy dog racing around the house like mad. I truly do wonder what she does all day. So I fed her, ate some dinner of mine own and then headed to the bike shop for another computrainer ride. It was just a short one tonight for me (1:15), but good. Someone picked a very HILLY ride to do on the computrainer which was not appreciated by all, but we survived. :) Powerman Alabama's course is on there and I'm just hoping and praying I'm not around when they decide to ride that one...
And now it's time to go to bed. That alarm will soon be sounding again...
Posted by beth at January 10, 2008 9:12 PM
Comments
Way to go with the swimming! Looks like that set lets you really work on learning and knowing your pace. As soon as I opened your post, it started raining cats and dogs here, too. Spooky!
-Danielle
Posted by: Danielle at January 11, 2008 2:38 PM