After a month of being closed, the Bally's pool is finally open! Those that know me, know I have been appropriately compensated for the lack of ability to work out ;).
It has been quite the struggle to swim, and I have to say that the pool closure really fizzled my motivation. Swimming is my strong sport (I'm not fast, just strong), so when this goes, the rest of it is extremely hard to bring back into the picture! In the past month I swam in the "lap pool" (see April 6 entry), then April 7 I got a 1/4 mile in the dive shop's pool but that's it. The dive shop is a little better than the lap pool but it's only 48 feet rather than the 25 yards, plus I had to wrestle with the "cleaning robot."
I have a race in 3 weeks and since I purchased a new wetsuit, I really needed to test it out. I typically race with a sleeveless wetsuit and am very comfortable with that; as a matter of fact, as a divemaster I'm rather comfortable with most wetsuits! BUT, big but.. you should NEVER try something out the first time on race day - so I reluctantly took my brand new xterra wetsuit into the chlorinated pool!
The first 50 yards were VERY WEIRD, I felt like a leaf. I haven't swam with a wetsuit in several months. I do love the buoyancy and trim you get! After the first lap I got it, and was able to sink my head enough to get UNDER the water instead of floating around on top. I did about 1/3 of a mile before it was too hot to continue. I don't need heat stroke in the pool. (indoor pools are 85-90 degrees, not a good combo for wearing a wetsuit). The most awesome thing was that I was pacing to a 36 minute mile with the suit on. This isn't incredibly fast for Triathletes, but I consider myself in a different category and I'm quite happy with that time! BTW I finished off the mile without the wetsuit!
I guess even though the pool was closed, I still retained some of the knowledge of the Total Immersion! YEA! 3 weeks though to freeze my rear off!
On another awesome note, I'm so proud of my training partner Alexis. She totally kicks ass in general but for some reason didn't think she could swim a mile. Before the swim I said "ok today we do 36 laps." She said "How far is that?" - to which I replied "I'll let you know when we're done."
She finished the mile no problem :).
See, you can do anything you put your mind to! I'm very convinced of this!
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