Good morning officer....

This morning I was up and at it at 5:30am.  I wanted to check the progress of Bryan and Simon at their Ironman China race, plus I wanted to be up early enough to have time for coffee and food before my first swim with the Triathlon Club of Burlington.

I arrived at the school and parked where I could see a few cars, left the motor running for a minute while I checked out the area to see if anyone was coming or going.  A nice police man pulled up beside me to see if I was up to any shenanigans but I think as soon as he saw the state of me, pre-workout (yeah nice hair) he decided I was not a threat and wished me a good day.  I realized I was at the wrong spot, drove around a bit and found the pool a few minutes later.

Everyone was really friendly and welcoming and there was another woman that was a first timer like me.  There were only 10 of us there, a few were missing and there are still spots available.  I'm not sure how it's going to be once there are more.  Me and the ONG (other new girl) were put in the slow lane with 2 other girls so the coach could assess us and we were off.  We started with an easy swim, up and back for 200m, then did 8 rounds (400m) of drills which were interesting.  It is apparent that I while I can swim the front crawl pretty decently I have some major coordination issues for some of the drills.  One drill you are supposed to stroke with your arm and kick six times with one foot, stroke again, kick six times with the other foot.  Ha, didn't happen but musta been pretty funny to watch.  We did catch up, catch back, right arm, left arm, fist stroke, finger somethingorother and underwater crawl.  Between the drills and the warm up I was tuckered and there was still an hour to go.

At the end we did some 'racing'.  First we raced in our own lanes and our group got a 7 second head start and I made to the wall slightly before the fast lane. Yeah, I know I had a head start but I was pretty proud of myself.  For the next one he put the slow and fast lanes together and as each race went our head start got smaller, 7 seconds, then 6.  On the final round ONG asked if this was the last one, the coach said yes, she was happy, she said she needed to know, mentally.  I get that!

Then, that liar put ALL OF US in one lane, slow, medium AND fast for another round.  The girl beside me said that it's simulating a triathlon, lots of traffic. I asked her, "isn't that like sending a virgin into an orgy?".  I don't think she found it funny.  This time we only got a 4 second head start and I was just happy to make it to the other end (but I wasn't last, yay).

These swims will go for the next 9 weeks or so with two weeks off for the Around the Bay and something else but it's money well spent as I wouldn't push myself this hard on my own and I'm learning a ton. I think I must have done over 2000m today!   Now for my extra large Timmys and I need to find food!