Swim Day without laps

Yesterday was cold, rainy and my girls wanted to ride their bikes.  The basement still isn't set cleared for their indoor track so I started to go through options.

1. Ride the carousel - Fun but won't get rid of enough energy
2. Ice Skate - my wife gave me that "are you kidding" stare and then said something about ankles and damaged for life.
3. No outdoor options

So we decided to go to a local pool - not a lap pool but one with water-slides, buckets that drop water, basket ball and a bunch of crazy kids and even crazier parents who wear jean shorts and white shirts...(you don't want to see the picture). 

For a person that swims a lot, I'm not really that fond of pools.  I don't like to get splashed and because I was a lifeguard for so many years, it kind of feels like work to me.  I spend most of my time trying to keep other kids from slamming into my kids and yelling (yes, I wish I had a my own whistle) at my girls to walk.

We arrived at the pool about 15 minutes into the last swim session of the day and the place was deserted.  We had a choice of family changing rooms, lots of locker options and no standing and waiting for the water slides. 

We had a blast and I could focus on fun rather than the typical mayhem. 

A highlight for me was being able to start teaching the girls how to swim and for them to be relaxed enough to listen and then practice. 

We splashed, played turtle, and relaxed. 

Great family adventure.  Much better than the mall!

Starting is way harder than stopping

I'm back to being a triathlete.  I had a pretty rough fall with a lot of travel, moved across town, a cold, vacation to and being tired and lazy. 

So with the time change and return from the heartland, I started to train again.  I thought I would write this point about a week ago but didn't because I didn't want to jinx my comeback. 

Starting back is tough, since I feel so much shame over not being in the shape that I was.  I rode 50 miles with my brother and one of his teammates (discovered later he is podium regular in CAT 3) and I barely survived.  He had me ride his FELT F3 with Quarq so that I could see my power numbers.  All I can say is that I didn't need 3 hours in front of the computer after a 3 hour ride to confirm that I am not that powerful and need to ride more.

So now I'm back to my lunch runs, morning swim/bike and life and I'm happy to be back.  I feel better when training and am confident that I'll be ready for racing this spring.  I've now run in the wet, scraped windows to go swimming and have made my pain cave mine.

Now if I can only remember how hard it is to get going, maybe I'll not stop again.

What I'd miss if I didn't run

I keep thinking that I will literally run out of things to write about based on my lunch runs.  As I ran today I scared off a bunch of geese but I wasn't surprised because I already knew I was a predator.  I also wasn't too surprised to see barefoot running guy or people lined up to climb a tree.

Yet I did see something that was note worthy and a warning to most of us who are afraid of "crossing the line of decency".

One of the recent inventions that I don't like is dog sweaters.  I just don't understand that after thousands of years of domestication, people had to breed for total dependence on people.  You'd think that rather than breeding dogs that require sweaters, being carried, and owners to carry and plastic bags and pick-up poop that breeders would have finally developed a breed which cleans up the house, carries it's own poop and eats compost.

And so today when I saw a dog in a green argyle sweater, I immediately started my inside rant, and then I noticed something that left me speechless.  A sort of "whuuu" left my lips and I heard a distinct ringing in my ears. 

The man walking the dog was also wearing a sweater...a green argyle sweater...which matched the dog.  A line of common decency was crossed.

I should stopped and taken a picture and then used my phone to call some sort of help line to arrange an intervention, but instead, since I am a runner, I just kept going.  Can't stop...

And so now I sit here writing, looking forward to what my next run has in store.  Maybe he will be out again, this time with a matching hat and sweater and I can respond appropriately.