Tough love from the lane ropes

I suppose they're not really ropes anymore. These are hard plastic disks to break up waves, mounted on a wire, strung between the ends of the pool. The idea is to mark out lanes so we can swim in an orderly fashion. At least I didn't leave any blood behind in the water, but I think it was a near thing.

Monday swim was good. 250 or 300 m warmup, then 10 x 100 on 2 min, all in 1:50 or so, (long course). Then 3 x 100 hard, aiming for 90 seconds, and not quite making it, but with a bit more rest. Some cool down.

Today I watched fast Ed in the next lane. Zoom. I started good, and then settled into a struggle to keep form. The water feel kept coming and going over the first 1500 m, and was totally gone for the last 500 m. Barely did it under 40 min, long course. At first I was dodging a breast stroker, but there was lots of room to pass.

The hard part was I kept drifting into the lane rope, and my wrist was getting bashed up. Of course this interrupted my stroke, but I can't solely blame the lane marker. My swim felt clunky and weak. At one point my kick just stopped for no apparent reason.

The ultimate privation was having to make do with the small hot tub because they were cleaning the big one. The swim team was pretty cranky about that. It is very interesting listening to kids in high school talk about their lives. One of them was talking about transitioning his grandparents from cable to getting TV over the internet. It was a bit of a shock when he mentioned their ages (barely older than me) and being totally clueless about technology. They asked, he said, and I'm not sure I believe him, to hook up their old VCR so they could record stuff and watch it later.

Tonight I was all geared up to go for a run as I left work. Somewhere during the drive home the desire just ebbed out of me. By the time we got home I wanted a nap. I think I'm going to read a bit and go to bed.

Here's the white peony opened up a bit more, with the image tweaked in Snapseed. Photos of flowers is one of the times I wish I had a real camera with a good lens.