My Favorite Thing About This Morning Was NOT My Open Water Swim
Friday, August 24, 2007
It was actually the amazing egg and cheese breakfast sandwich I just ate. But, I get ahead of myself.
I was up early (for me) this morning to get in a swim in so as to free up my evening a bit for some Friday Night Fun, and I just did not want to go. Unlike other mornings, today, it wasn't the being up early-ish that got me, it was just how terrible it looked outside.
I've been putting this swim off the past few days, largely because whenever I got my gear together to head to the lake, it would start storming and phrases like "Severe T-Storm Warning: Dane County" or "Flash Flood Watch: Dane County" would scroll across the television screen (oh, and to pile on, the Y's pool is closed all week). Call me a wimp, or what you will, but being in the middle of a lake in those conditions is not training I was eager to tough out -- better safe than sorry, as they say. (As Xt4 mentioned, it has, indeed been a "craptacular" first week of taper, weather-wise).
As I brushed my teeth, I could only think of how much I didn't want to swim this morning. Eventually, I got me out the door with the promise that it would feel great once I got in the water and just got started. Because that's always how it works.
Or, almost always.
First off, it was miserable out. All dark and threatening-looking, with rain that swayed in intensity from a mist to big drops. The water and sky over Lake Wingra blended together into one, large sheet of depressing or sinister (depending on how you looked at it) grey.
Next, my wetsuit finally pulled on, I tried zipping it up. Stuck. In the exact couple of inches where my arms just don't reach on my back. And no matter how I contorted my body or flailed about on the picnic table by the lake, there was no budging the zipper, and no reaching the stuck section. To make matters worse, there was no one around -- not one single, solitary person -- who could un-stick my wetsuit zipper. I considered driving to Chief of Stuff's house, only blocks away, to enlist his help. But then I thought of what the neighbors might think of a girl standing on his porch in a wetsuit at the crack of dawn, and reconsidered.
Finally, I saw two joggers approaching and ran over to the road, oblivious to the mud now coating my feet and the bottom half of my neoprene-covered body. Thankfully, they weren't scared away by the crazy woman running toward them, and helped me out.
Once in the water, I settled into a good rhythm. My swimming feels as though it's gotten exponentially better in the past couple of months. Not necessarily a lot faster, mind you, but better. My form is more streamlined and I've got a better pull (as evidenced by the fact that my fingers and pad of my palm is sometimes sore after a longer swim). In general, I feel like I'm cutting through the water, more powerfully but also smoother.
Today was like that, too. Until a seagull started circling me like I was a dead seal. Lower and lower. Swooping down, seemingly right at me, just a couple feet above.
Back into a rhythm. Until...not much later, I felt my hand brush something. Not something weedy or woody, but something scaly and big. I screamed underwater, and choked on the murky water. And I swear that scaly thing, or perhaps a friend of the scaly thing, tried to take a nibble on my right toe as I passed by, too.
And then, as I turned around at the half-way point, I saw a few little scaly things floating belly-up in the water. Perhaps they had been caught by the fishing line that I soon found myself tangled in, perhaps they had died a natural fishy death. Either way, I couldn't have been more over being out there in that water.
I'm not usually fearful of what I can't see in the water. But today? Different story altogether. It was just too much. The seagull and fish and fishing line and dead, dead fish. And I did what any rational, mature, 30-something would do. I let my mind race over all of the nasty things held by that murky water that may or may not be out to get me. Maybe there were snapping turtles, or leeches. Or a pet alligator that some college kid had gotten tired of and dropped off earlier in the summer. I raced back across that lake, trying to outswim all that I couldn't see like I was in a sprint tri.
The original morning's plan was to do an across-and-back twice. But I have quite a few long swims scheduled for next week, and there was just no way that I was going back out into that water, so I called it a morning ... but not before spotting another handful of dead fish washed up on shore and stepping in a giant pile of goose shit, barefoot.
In all, it was enough to make me think I should've stayed in bed.
Posted by Erin 7:25 AM
Save it for the real deal is my thought for ya!