Swim, Bike, Run

Hi. It's Laura.

swim, bike, run, swim! bike! run! SWIM BIKE RUN, SWIMBIKERUNSWIMBIKERUNSWIMBIKERUN

I'm tired. I have been training nonstop for the last 24 hours and I am not even going to get my strength training in this week at all. Yesterday morning I swam. When your first swim of the week is 1300 meters your second swim of 900 seems like a piece of cake.

My! How far I have come. I was excited back in October when I could swim two laps nonstop. And I thought I was making real big progress when I reached ten laps. Now 10 laps is my warm up.

I was actually looking forward to an easy Thursday morning swim. Although the swim itself was easy, my pool time did not remain drama free. I have not had an incident in the pool in a long time (since I changed my perspective on the crowds). Most of the drama I experienced came from how many were in the lane. Inconsiderate people were just being pushy and inconsiderate and either too fast or too slow for the lane they are in. Yesterday's drama stemmed from a busy body sticking her nose in where it didn't belong. I am not proud of my choice words for her but I do believe they were deserved.

Yesterday afternoon I needed to get my long ride in. I thought for days leading up to it that the ride was 2 hours 30 minutes. I was so happy that I was wrong. The ride was actually only supposed to be 2 hour and 15 minutes. Not a huge difference but, I will tell you, after sitting on a bike seat for over two hours, any time shorter than what you thought is a relief.

32.50 miles in two hours and 20 minutes. Yes I increased my ride by 5 minutes but it was an accident. I'll explain. I was in NJ yesterday visiting The Parents. I brought my bike with me and thought, “a ride at the Jersey Shore won't that be great”. I can ride along the beach. The scenery will be lovely. What a nice change of pace.

So I left my parent place in Ocean, NJ and headed south. My aim was to make it to Point Pleasant, NJ. I almost made it. I got to the end of the town just before Point Pleasant. The draw bridge to get into Point was open and the traffic looked bad so I turned around to head back. Two problems there: 1) I was only 45 minutes into my ride which means I am going to have to continue to ride north from where I started and 2) the wind. Ouch the wind. My speed heading south was an impressive average of 18 MPH. Not so much on the way back. I could not get the bike over 12MPH. It was like going uphill the entire time. By the time I hit my starting point to head north, I was wiped out.

But I persevere and headed into Deal, NJ. Somewhere along Ocean Ave in Deal, it struck me that I may have read my training plan wrong. I keep the plan on my phone so I pulled over to look. YES! YES! YES! It says 135 minutes not 150! I 'm headed home! Tired, sweaty and starving I arrive at Mom's where I ate two lunches.

Today I was grateful to only have a 30 minute run. Physically it was not any one part of my body but more like an overall feeling of fatigue. I also needed to NOT challenge my body or my psyche. Central Park is very crowded on Friday mornings with the summer concert series that goes on in the lower part of the park. I decided it was best to run Riverside Park today.

I got to run along the Hudson River and check out the swim course. If you did not know yet, the swim part of the Tri is in the Hudson River. We enter at 98th Street and swim down to 79th street.

Last week I rode my bicycle up toward the GWB and I stopped for a moment to look at the River. The current was fierce but moving down which gave me hope for the swim part. If the current is going to push and I am wearing a wetsuit, the swim won't be as bad as I thought.

That changed today. On my way back down, I watched the water closely. No current just wake waves from passing boats and a lot of garbage sitting along the sea wall. They are going to clean that up for us right? I hope so. I have "swam" in the Atlantic Ocean growing up and the beaches in NJ weren't always clean back then. So I have hit garbage before (not happy about it). But the thing that really got me was the dead fish floating near the sea wall in all the debris. I will admit, I was a little freaked out. I continued running and watching the water. There it is, a second dead fish. I think I need to stop looking at the water.

So maybe this morning I should have run in Central Park after all. I know how to deal with “screaming mimis” and rude tourist. I have no idea what to do with dead fish.

Enjoy your weekend.

Play hard!

Laura