A lazy swim; it's also not too cold out either

Right now, mid-afternoon, it's not quite -17 C (2 F) so I'd call it just a bit brisk, especially since there's a light wind blowing and a bit of snow coming down. What with an ART/Chiro session and a strong 30 minute core session I'm not really up for a run today, but one is on the books for tomorrow. It should be about the same temperature, but maybe sunny, so it should be a good day for a run. Core included 13 pushups (a new record for me!) 50 squats and 100 crunches. Plus other stuff. Felt pretty good.

News from the ART/Chiro session is good. My doctor says the muscles and stuff around the knee feel stronger, and the whole joint feels more stable. It seems to be responding well to the treatments. Maybe this weekend I'll have another go at the bike and see what happens.

But this morning I was feeling lazy, and didn't want to swim too hard. So I relaxed and thought about my stroke trying for smooth and relaxed and easy. The feel of the water was there big time! Mz Elegant joined my lane so that was encouragement to not lollygag around in the lane or I'd get run over.
1K 18:30
2 K 37:12
I figured that was enough so I started some kick and pull drills, alternating with some faster swim sets to keep up with the two other guys that joined when she finished up. Yeah, I admit it, my inner shark came out to play. It was kind of fun lapping them, especially since one of them at least was trying to keep ahead. I really didn't want to push it too hard so I called it a swim at 1.5 hr mark. The only pauses were to take the fins off or on, so I'm guessing I swam somewhere between 4 and 4.5K.

Chatted after with a couple of the guys that had been in the pool. I'll be seeing one of them at the Mercury Rising Swim Camp, and told another about it, so I might be seeing him too.

I happened to be downtown a little while ago and went through some of the +15 space. They've been doing a bunch of renovations on it, along with still working on the Devonian Garden space. This was THE primo space in downtown Calgary to eat your lunch in winter, since it's a fully enclosed 3.5 acre multi level rooftop garden space. It's supposed to re open soon, and I can't wait. It was amazing before. Here's what the +45 space looks like. One entrance to the Devonian Gardens are just behind me in this shot. It's from the east end of the +45 looking west towards the food court.

Same spot, looking down a bit more.

Looking down even more.

Here's a partial view of a glass bridge that's not yet open. This is looking more east.

 Moving along a bit and looking almost straight down. Those glass panels look down onto a street. All this is a big pedestrian bridge between two buildings, part of the +15 system. This is one of the reasons that people working downtown don't mind winter so much. Once you're inside you can go almost anywhere, if you don't lose your sense of direction, and can get through some of the non-intuitive bits. It's an amazing space. There are at least 57 bridges connecting the buildings downtown, and about 16 K of space connecting them. It's a great place to stroll. I have had dreams of doing a running race through one of the bigger loops, once the Penny Lane section is rebuilt. Here's a map, which includes The Bow, but not the Penny Lane section, even though both are at essentially the same construction stage.

Just to round out the tour of downtown, here's the new tallest building in Western Canada, Encana's Bow building. 58 floors, 236 m (774 feet) high. Looking nice! Just because I love this sort of thing, here's a time lapse video of them working on the first 10 stories or so. I'd love to see the same thing for the whole building.

And now my hair is dry again, so it's time to go shovel snow. We've got it light compared to some, like the US NE area. But Vancouver Island has been getting dumped on as well. The Mount Washington ski resort got nearly 3 m over several days, then in the last 24 hours they got another 2 m of snow. I'm glad I'm not digging that out.