Who are you?

Wednesday night I headed to the west side for an open water swim. Upon arriving the total immersion coach that also meets there on Wednesdays asked if any of us CTCers had checked on the Lake's bio levels. Heehee. I know better than to do that. We would never get in the water!

Ahh if only you all knew what I knew ;)

She then told us there were quite a few dead fish. More than the week before. I saw the panic in a few CTCers eyes but I laughed it off and we all headed down to the water.

There were a couple of large dead fish on the beach, but as that was what greeted me the first time I ever swam at this beach I wasn't too shocked. The way she had said it I was imagining waves of dead fish near shore, which I have seen at the beach close to me.

So we all waded in and got to it. We swim out then to the right breakwall about 300 yards, then all the way to the left breakwall, about 600 yards, back, and to the middle again. About 1800 yards total. (Which never ask me to calculate that while swimming, because I never came up with that total that night)

When I was about 10 we went on a family trip to Disney. We went to the water park where you can "swim with the sharks." For some reason my parents thought we would love this. Boy oh boy were they wrong! You have never seen two kids swim so fast in your lives! Little did they know about our overactive imaginations in the water! My sister and I played in the pool pretty much everyday it was warm enough our whole childhood. Well that's a lot of time in the pool, so you come up with little "games" to make it more exciting. Our most common game involved us as mermaids. And you could not go in the areas of the pools with shadows, because that's where the sharks lived. As recently as last October I could still freak myself out in an indoor pool if I were by myself and there were shadows! I know I am bizarre!

But my point is, Wednesday night I swam like I belonged in Lake Erie. I did not worry about sharks or dead fish. Although I must admit it was a bit disturbing to feel a tap on my toes, turn around expecting TriSaraTops and find a dead fish instead. I just swam, and swam well. We did around a mile in 27 minutes at what I felt was a relaxed effort (not including breaks to regroup). I didn't have a hard time with the waves on Wednesday and despite the sun right in my eyes and my left arm still bothering me from weed whacking, I did a great job of swimming straight.

I don't know where this open water persona came from but she is very interesting.

After the swim I went out and rode my bike for just shy of an hour. Got in about 16 miles at around 16.5 mph. My legs have felt tapped every time I get on the bike lately. Just one day I would like for them to feel fresh.