Two Ears One Mouth

Remember that time I swam in the river and had a panic attack and had to sing It's a Small World over and over while a kayaker looked on and pitied me? No? Read about that here . Anyway, I tried it again yesterday and thankfully did much better! I don't panic in open water anymore (hallelujah!) so I already had a huge advantage over the last time. The swim wasn't until 9:15 so The Colonel and I just woke up like we normally do for work which was a nice change over the normal before dawn wake up calls. Unfortunately we woke up to rain which was going to continue throughout the morning. I've never swam or raced a tri in the rain so this was new territory but I just pretended it was a run and reminded myself that weather is always something we just have to put up with. We got to the site and saw a couple from church I'm trying to court into friendship with us so it was fun getting to chat with them. The husband will be an Ironman in a few weeks so definitely a little...

Let's Tarentino this report. I finished the swim! Our cyclist finished the ride! Our runner finished the run! We finished the race (and in less than 7 hours!) So how did it go? Let's go back...and I'll warn you, it's a long one. Much like every race report. I bought new goggles with better tint since everyone in the Muncie Facebook group who had raced before said if the sun was out it would be blinding after the second turn. I drove to the pool and did a quick 20 minutes to make sure they fit and shake out a little energy. Thursday night I got everything packed up since we were leaving Friday afternoon after my much needed massage. As usual I had a little help getting things together. But he's generally more into directing since he doesn't have thumbs.  Friday afternoon my sister and I hit the road for the 3 hour drive. We opted against using the highway the whole way since construction is crazy and unpredictable. The winding country roads kept things int...

Can somebody please explain to me how it's July 11th? If I feel this crazy before a half iron relay it's probably for the best that I wimped out of Raleigh! I've been cruising along all week feeling pretty ok, even this morning I was alright. And then I got on the internet. It's that typical pre-race panic that accompanies every race but this one is on roids. Probably because this is something I've never done before. So it's like the first time all over again, except I think I'd forgotten what it felt like. But then I find a calm when I think back to my very first open water swim. I can now look back on it with a smile and a sense of pride unique to that experience and swimming in general. I posted yesterday on my various social media accounts about how far I've come as a swimmer. I still have trouble typing that without quotes. When I first tried this swimming for fitness thing out I couldn't make it 25 meters. I couldn't tread water w...

Hello again! We all obviously know that I've been away for a while so let's just move on shall we? One of the things I've been doing in my absence has been swimming... a lot . Or at least a lot more than I ever have. I signed up with a relay team for Ironman 70.3 Muncie and I was dumb enough to be the swimmer so I spend about 4 days per week in the water in hopes to not be pulled from the race due to not making the time cutoff (which is a very real possibility). Since it's warm enough to be wetsuit free I'm trying to take advantage of as much open water time as possible and that included signing up for a 2k swim at Freeman Lake in Elizabethtown (just like the movie, except this was real life and we were all less attractive). source This wasn't a race, it was officially called an open water swimming clinic so very few of the people there had the normal intensity that can be seen in races. There were the serious athletes of course but I think we all k...