The 12 swims of Christmas

My coach put a lot of thought into a fun Christmas swim for Monday. Just like counting off the 12 days of Christmas, this had 12 different things in the main set. It made for a lot of writing; I filled up two of the little pages I stuff into a baggie. Numbered them, and placed them back to back.

It was a lot of fun working through the sets. Lots of different things. The only thing I didn't do was the 25 m where I had to breath every 9 strokes. That was after 25 m of every 3 strokes (no problemo), 25 m of very 5 strokes (ok), and 25 m of every 7 strokes (a bit of a struggle). I tried for 9, and my body said breath!!! on eight strokes. I got some water while doing that, and the rest of the length was a bit of a shambles.

I was sharing a lane with a lady that swims really slow, but we each had our half so it wasn't an issue. How slow? She's churning away on front crawl. We all know I have a pathetic kick. Even so, I passed her while doing kick only. Easily. I saw one of the guys from swim camp and said hello, on a 5 second break, but I can't remember his name. (If you're reading this, I'm sorry, please leave a comment, and I'll do better next time.)

It ended up being an hour, not sure how many m, then another 15 minutes of core in the dive tank. I timed it perfectly. The floaties were coming in just as I was leaving. The number is still 228. I think my days of easy weight loss are over, and I'm going to have to get serious about this.

After some breakfast I was out for a secret mission. Nearly got gezzered a few times, and watched the start of a geezering. As you exit off 14th st southbound, there is a one lane road into Glenmore Landing parking lot. I came in that way, and there is a geezer sitting patiently in the lot with her right signal on. I turn left out of the ramp, and she turns right behind me, onto the road I just left, so she is heading against the stream of traffic, though there was none at the moment, where she would soon end up facing the very busy southbound 14th St going about 80K. Somebody was going to get a nasty shock much sooner than later.

Later in the day (ie, daylight, which is in short supply here these days) I was out for an easy run, 40 minutes. I was thinking of making it an even 45, but it took a little longer getting around the block than I thought, and when I passed the house with the watch showing 38 minutes, and me getting cold, that made it easy. I did the two minutes out and back, and went inside. It was quite a bit colder than it had been in the morning, and I turned out to be just slightly underdressed. Some frost on the moustashe, but nothing worth photographing.

Just for the geeks among us, I found the sunrise, sunset, and total daylight hours for Calgary today.
Dec 21, 2009, 08:38 AM, 04:32 PM, 7h 53m 53s. Less if it's cloudy. And you guys wonder why the fake n bake industry exists up here.

Tuesday bike took a bit of working up to. I haven't been sleeping well lately so I was slow to get moving. However, once I got on I had a really good session. 2 hrs, lots of it at 90 rpm, and some of it gradually moving into harder gears while trying to maintain 90.

Then the core. That wasn't so good. In fact, it was pathetic. Only 15 minutes before I gave it up, and it was a shambles from the start. Maybe I'll have another go at it later; it couldn't be any worse.