Trial run

The channel gods were conspiring against me this week. First, I got pulled out of the pool on Tuesday because of a serious thunderstorm. I thought that the lifeguards were being lazy and looking for thunder, but the hail and tornadoes proved otherwise. Then, there was a major crisis at work on Wednesday. With the sky falling and pigs flying, my mind just wasn't focused on my evening workout. Then, the final, sabatoging blow to my weekly yardage count came when the Homestead pool was closed for maintenance, so I didn't get my usual long swim in on Friday. What was a channel bound girl to do?

I decided to call upon Matt Davis, a fellow DAMA swimmer who is also doing the swim around Key West. I was looking for someone to open water swim with for, oh maybe an hour or so, on Sunday. Well, Matt had other ideas. He wanted to swim for 3 hours, for a minimum of 6 miles. This put a damper in my afternoon plans of watching lifetime and eating bonbons. Still, despite the pleading eyes of my lap loving pug, I agreed (sorry Sneakers). I decided to make this a trial run for the Key West race, a dress rehearsal so to speak.

I wore my open water racing suit, since I had never worn it in a long event before and wanted to see where it might chafe. After 3 hr 8 min of continuous swim time (3 hr 30min of total water time and about 13,500 yards covered) I felt tired, but I didn't think my pace had slowed down much. I got out of the lake feeling hungry but pleased. When I changed, I found that I had 2 swim hickies (swimsuit chafe marks around my neck) and this very dainty little sunburn:



Week 18:
Mon: swim 4500 yds
Tues: swim 1600 yds
Wed: swim 3400
Thurs: swim 8300
Fri: swim 4400
Sat: rest
Sun: swim 13,500
Total: swim 35,700