Monday, March 30, 2015

Dominican Republic Lap Swimming

This past week Shannon and I had a much welcomed respite from the long New England winter and went to the Dominican Republic.  We stayed at a great resort called Casa de Campo on the southeast coast. It's a huge resort and community with horseback riding, polo, golf, a marina, fine dining and of course beautiful beaches for swimming.

The beaches were beautiful white sand and pale blue water that was just the right temp. It felt so good to read on the beach and then to cool off in the Caribbean.  Serious lap swimming wasn't the focus of this trip but I did get a couple of medium distance open water swims in.

One of the trips highlights was a day trip to Isla Catalina a short boat ride from the resort. The beach was empty (at least for awhile) the sand even whiter and the water even paler blue. Gorgeous! 

A lane all to myself.

My open water lap pool. 

Most of our time was at the beach we did enjoy some of the resorts other amenities riding around in our golf cart; skeet shooting, watching a polo match and enjoying rum drinks. We were introduced to the stables by some new friends and found a corral of burrows.

A picture with our family.

Our journey was part of a client Div Trip and one of the activities we did was a half day community service project. It was at the Boca de Chavon school. The school was in a poor rural village relatively close to Casa de Campo.  We did a variety things but the bigger projects were building raised vegetable beds and painting a building that was going to be used as a library. The kids were very cute and excited to have us there. This too was a highlight of the trip; helping other less fortunate than us and putting in perspective how very blessed we are.

A picture of the kids, volunteers and the library.

Sadly, after a week it was time to come back to cold, snowy Boston.  Looking forward to the next beach with warm waters and a piƱa colada!

Oh and looking forward to spring and summer in Boston.
Ahhhh-paradise

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Birtdhay Celebration Swims

This week I celebrated with two birthday swims both in excess of 5,000 yards.

My friend, Big Daddy Carmen and I share the same birthdate March 10th. I am however a couple of years older and wiser.

On Tuesday, March 10th BD was traveling so I was solo. I got in a bit early, swam with the morning group and then capped it off swimming a few hundred yards on my own. I can't remember what the workout was but I swam 5200 yards + 100 for good luck! Keeping with tradition the last 50 was fly.

BD was celebrating his a milestone 50th year so we did the obligatory 50x100's.  We rallied two lanes of our workout group for this celebration. There were some enthusiastic takers and some not so much. Here is the workout:

10x100 1:40 warm up & drill/swim
10x100 1:30 (4 IM)
5x100 1:25
9x100 1:30 (I pulled)
4x100 1:20
8x100 1:30
3x100 1:15
100 IM
100 warm down (last 25 fly)
5000 +100 for good luck

Looking forward to celebrating a 30 or 40 year olds birthday next.

Important to note that we both still don't use the ladder to get out of the pool!!!