Three things Thursday - Swim, bike run

1. I went swimming across a river yesterday.

Initially I referred to it as a lake, but my aunt corrected me. It's the wide part of a river because it's just before a dam, but a river nonetheless. My aunt and uncle live on it, so my uncle took me out with his canoe. (There is boat traffic there, and they wouldn't expect a swimmer, so not too safe otherwise.)

It was great. I have limited open water experience, and getting more is going to be one key to being successful in the banff triathlon.

A couple observations:

I'm still not great at siting, but I'm getting better. When I swam with a group at ghost lake, I criss crossed a lot. This time, I still kept going off in one direction, but sited enough to fix it.

I feel better about swimming distances now. When I did the Chestermere tri, the first thing I thought was "wow, those bouys are far away". I thought the same thing when I looked at the opposite shore line. (My uncle figures it's about 400 metres.) Actually swimming, I realized it wasn't that far. Mentally, it's a huge benefit for me to see these distances and stop freaking out about them.

2. One thing this week has been great for is my biking.

With the kids in daycamp, I'm able to get rides in during the day, on my road bike. No resorting to doing them with my hybrid and chariot, or the trainer. It's a good feeling. I do what I need to normally, but it's nice to hit the open road.

3. I checked out a running track yesterday.

I've been really debating speed work. I know I can go faster then I do, and am considering bringing some speed work in after my Oly tri. One good way to do that is on a running track, so the kids and I drove over to one of the town's high school's to take a look.

Spud was very excited about it and wanted to race. Sweetpea was being grumpy and wasn't quite as excited. I was just glad it was there. Whether I use it regularly or not, it gives me options. It's much bigger then the indoor track in town (and more free). It also occured to me that this could be a way of getting in runs on occasion with the kids around. I could bring some outdoor toys and let them play in the middle while I run the track...