Weekend Update - Part 1

It has been a very busy weekend and somehow I managed to make it so that it was productive, relaxing, and a lot of fun - all at the same time! :) I will break this blog up a bit for a couple reasons. Partly because it just makes sense, and secondly if I make the blog too big I'll get intimidated by the task at hand and quite possibly never finish the post (which has happened many times before).

Right so down to business...

As typical of my weekends of late, I was a good girl who only had a couple beers on Friday and was in bed before the coach turned into a pumpkin. This meant I was up early enough to be fresh and ready for my early morning swim training on Saturday.

Now I will pause here to say at first I was a bit reluctant with all this early Saturday morning business. It means I can't really let loose on Fridays and have to get up at around 7-730 (depending on how slowly I'm moving) to be out the door in time to get the public transit to the beach. However, it has turned out to be really quite amazing. There is something refreshing and energizing about getting in the water first thing in the morning, seeing the fish swimming below you in the surf, and having a relaxing swim. So basically I'm loving it.

So this Saturday we did a big swim, which was 1.6K. However it was really pleasant because there were virtually no waves and it was a nice sunny day. This was an additional bonus because I signed up to do another race on Sunday which was 1.8K, so for me this was a great warm-up.

Saturday continued to be a scorching day, so I took my trainer's advice and got one of my recommended bi-weekly massages (he really had to twist my arm on that one). :) After the massage I returned home to catch up on my downloaded Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice episodes while trying not to bake.

A very literal comparison of the two days would be to say that Saturday was day and Sunday was night... I woke up to a very grey sky which was trying to rain, and a light wind. By the time we got to the beach where our swim was the slight wind was stronger and the sea was storming like the rest of the weather looked like it should be. So in comparison to Saturday's swim, the waves were MASSIVE. Now my friend Louise and I were both thinking in that maybe they would cancel the swim because the waves were too dangerous. Oh no, this just happened to be one of the serious swims where they don't really care too much about big waves - they just add another dozen life savers on boards, change the course a bit and send you out there.

The view of the beach from the car park - the swim was from between the two hills to the beach right in front of me...

We sucked it up and worked up the courage to go out for the warm up swim, only to find out that it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be - it was worse!! The beach had developed a ditch, which essentially means there was a sandbar about 20 metres out from the beach, so in the middle and on that bar we were thrown around like a rag doll in a washing machine. After the first instance of being completely thrown around by a wave, Louise and I both looked at each other and said "I don't like this very much." However once you've gone in the water and lived to walk back to the beach, it's really hard to say you aren't going back in.... so off we went when the horn sounded.

I will admit there are somethings in my training program which I don't do, but all up I would consider myself fit. However, getting out past those waves made me sooo exhausted that I had to flip on my back and just kick for a while to catch my breath. We rounded the first can/booey (which I have no idea how to spell) it wasn't too bad, aside from the up and down action of the waves which made it very hard to make sure I was swimming straight in the direction I wanted to go. For anyone prone to sea sickness this would have been horrible.

I rounded the last can and was excited to almost be done, only to look up to see the life savers trying to point us towards a less than straight angle towards the beach. Now when they tell me to go somewhere - I go. Unfortunately not everyone was as keen to follow their directions so there was some definite collisions going on, which I am NOT ashamed of because getting in was h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e. The waves were bigger, the ditch was deeper which meant I couldn't touch the bottom to regain my bearings and actually use the next wave to help me move closer to the beach. All I could really do for a good couple minutes was hold my nose and pray I got a long enough break to actually swim back towards shore. I was on the verge of putting my hand up for help when like the sun shining from above there was a break in the waves. So I swam as hard as my tired arms could take me, and made it back to land.

View from the beach where the race ended

The rest of Sunday was spent recovering and cleaning then topped up with a fantastic night, which will be the second blog.... can you handle the suspense???