I'm sorry, did you say you were tired???

Me and Susan, my swim coach.

Last night I mixed things up a little. I'm suppose to run an hour and swim an hour but since I had run on Monday, I decided to swap it out for a bike ride.

Now, since my bike is the shop, I was left to ride my husbands 20 year old Trek. It's barely hanging on. Despite the fact that it's the wrong fit for me, and that it's the senior citizen bike of our house, I still needed to ride no matter what. My bike would be a high end Lexus. This Trek would best be compared to a Nova. Sorry if you're a Nova driver and I'm offending you in some way.


Try changing these gears while flying downhill. No thanks.

Anyway, once again, I subjected myself to 35 mph winds on a ghetto ride. Funny part was that I loved it. I rode on one gear the entire time because changing gears at times felt like a death wish. I rode that Trek like it was my job! It wasn't fast by any means but my quads got a nice wake up call. It was almost like training on a Huffy from the high rack at Wal-Mart. If I sound like a snob about my bike it's because I am. My bike is the peacock of the bike neighborhood. I'll be making payments on it till 2014 but that's not what matters.

Second part of my training for the night was the one hour swim.

From now, until deep into summer, each master's swim class is turned into tri training. Last night was tread water like you're in the ocean, when you hear the whistle - TAKE OFF! Do not stop until you hear the whistle, then turn around and swim in the other direction until you hear the whistle. Then we're done. This process is just short of an hour.

Here we are, ten of us in the deep end. Swim sinsei makes us get right up against each other like we're in an elevator. You can't tread water without hitting someone. We're packed in like sardines. She says we better get use to it because this'll be how it goes on race day. I somehow end up at the front of everyone when the whistle goes off. I go from that awkward tread into a swim and as expected get bumped around like the start of a race. I take an arm to the back and am trading paint with some guy. I notice that there are a few women who are hustling themselves to the front, swimming like they were in imminent danger of a shark attack. They had no problem swimming right over me. Hmmm, all's fair in a race right!?

And I asked myself... "do they not know that we have 45 minutes of swim ahead of us? No touching, no stopping. Can they really hold that pace for 45 MINUTES!?"

I was fine to let everyone go. I was about 5th out of 10 but I was super comfortable, and really, that's all that matters to me.

While swimming we use the red clocks on the walls as sight points. It's also a reminder of how long you've swam and MORE SO, how much longer you have to go. I won't lie, it's tough to look up and see that only 6 minutes have passed and that you have about 39 more minutes to go.


My baby never came out looking like this.

About 15 minutes in I realized that I'm completely relaxed and thinking about random things like Blue Ivy, Jay -Z and Beyonce's baby. Swimming has this sick effect on me where I wonder about the lives of celebrities. What else am I to think about face-down in water for almost an hour??

Anyway, fast forward to minute 26. That woman that was frantic to swim over me!? I catch sight of her hanging on to the side of the pool wall. As I come up for a breath I can see her talking to swim sinsei ahead. I'm heading in that direction and so I calculate my position so that I can catch about 3 seconds of their conversation. I hear the words "I'm tired".

Excuse me??? Ex-cuse me!!? You're what? You weren't so tired when you were barrelling over top of me to get to the end of the pool like they were handing out free french fries now were you!? I was livid for 2 seconds and then I laughed to myself. Slow and steady wins the race EVERY TIME!

Fast forward to the 45 minute mark. Finally I hear the beloved whistle blow. I can stop. I'm tired but not by much. I'm interested in the fact that our numbers had dwindled by 6! We started with 10, only 4 of us were able to complete the task. I asked swim sinsei where everyone had gone and she said that people were trying to sneak out of the pool and head to the locker rooms without her noticing.

Note to water tramplers. You cannot sneak out of the pool without swim sinsei noticing.