#92 & a week of opposites

Not sure really where to begin it's been quite a swimming week! 

From indoor pools to outdoor pools from chlorine to salt water from coast to coast. It started on Patriots Day under the bubble at the Wayland Town Pool staring at the black line in lane 8.  In the short hour I could swim before heading to the airport Coach Jen had the perfect workout to knock me out for the long flight to Los Angeles. 

A short twelve hours later (maybe not so short) I found myself in the Pacific Ocean in my old stomping grounds-Laguna Beach!  It was for the second swim of the day! The water was a cool 59 degrees and I swam with no black lines from my hotel the Pacific Edge to the base of Las Brisas and back. It was just over a mile round trip and the water temp felt just fine. Cool but very doable. I could have swum longer. It was also a first~a bi-coastal east coast pool swim followed by a west coast open water swim all in the same day!

The next morning before having to leave for a business meeting in San Diego I was able to squeeze in three laps on the same course for about 1.5 miles. 

Post meeting in San Diego it was back up to Los Angeles for meetings the next day. After a quick pit stop at my hotel in Marina Del Rey it was off to the Bungalows and downtown Los Angeles to take Ryan and a friend to dinner. We went to the hip Ace Hotel had a drink on the roof top bar and then went downstairs for dinner. It was a fun and quick dinner with Ryan as he a lot of homework. Looking forward to seeing him in three weeks for graduation. 

It was early to bed as the next morning had the potential to be another first. The alarm went off at 5:00am. I groaned, rolled over and wrestled with whether or not I should go to swim practice or not. Good prevailed and I rolled out of bed for 5:30am practice with Southern California Aquatic Master. It was as at Loyola Marymount University in Playa Vista and pool #91. Per usual, in Southern California it was a 10 lane outdoor pool and set up long course too boot. It was a 3000m workout that started in the dark and ended at 6:30am with the light of dawn. It had been awhile since swimming long course and it felt good.

Post swim it was time for some quick nourishment on Abbott Kinney. I went to the TOM store where they have a cool back patio grabbed a bite to eat and did some work.

Recharged I was ready for round two~an open water swim.  It was off to Santa Monica and (lifeguard) Tower 26. It was a bit choppy with a fair amount of surfers in the line up. Once I made it past the break it was smooth-ish sailing. It was pretty kelpy in some spots and I got whacked by an unsuspecting wave once. I swam towards the Santa Monica Pier for bit and swam back. My guesstimate is that I swam 2000 yards. A quick check in with the lifeguard confirmed the water temp was 59-60 degrees. Feeling much better about my cold water acclimatization while I need to be in cool water longer than I have been it's really feeling quite good. A confidence boost, for sure. 

A chlorinated pool and the salty Pacific a two-fer before 9:30am~another first!

East coast vs west coast, old pools vs new pools, chlorine vs saltwater, indoors vs outdoors, black lines vs no black lines. So many opposites this week really shook the swim routine up-that's good!

#91 St. George's Prep & SAA Relay Challenge

This is a combo blogpost hitting on two swimming swim related events in the last couple of weeks.

The first was a quick hit, pool #89 in Newport, Rhode Island.  I was in town for a business meeting.  A little work on the World Wide Web let me to St. George's Prep School a quick 10 minute drive from my hotel. It was dark when I drove on to the spacious campus and I got lost for a bit. When I finally found the preppy lacrosse fields I knew I was in the right spot and just followed the small parade of cars and swimmers to the pool.  As expected at a swanky prep school the pool was nice. There wasn't much time for a long workout as I had to get back for a breakfast meeting. I was able to squeeze in 3000 yards-not too shabby.

Next up was the Swim Across America Relay Swim at Harvard's Blodgett Pool. I have participated in SAA events in the past, all open water but I had never volunteered for this worthy cause. My open water swimming friend, Jen contacted me one day and asked if I would be willing to help out. It was a Sunday and I had little else to do so-why not? Maybe I could get a few laps in myself!

The event is a 2 hour continuous relay swim with multiple teams competing against each other to raise money for cancer research, see who can swim the most yards and to have fun. There were over 250 swimmers of all ages from USA Swimming teams to US Masters teams. The pool deck was bedlam.

I got there early to help set up the sign up area and put signage up in the gallery. The most fun part was handing out t-shirts when the kids and adults came on to the deck.

The event was really fun to watch with teams of 5 swimmers to 15+ swimmers swimming 25 yards apiece up to 100 yards per swimmer. The music was loud and fun and the emcee was calling out instructions from specific strokes to doggy paddle to corkscrew to Macarena swimming. After watching the first hour and realizing there wasn't much volunteering to be done I decided to jump in with some friends on the Cambridge Masters team. I may have swum a total of 12 laps and I pretty sure everyone of them was some crazy made up stroke. It was a lot of fun!  With one minute left to go everyone jumped in the pool and cheered!

While SAA events are always fun they are always for a serious cause-cancer research.  With $80,000 raised before this event they were on track to raising well over $100,000. That's  a lot of money for a two hour relay swim. Unfortunately, I was reminded once again that cancer isn't something that effects other families it also has effected ours (again).  I swam for Ant Megan. She is a real trooper!