Weekend Wrap Up

It is Summer Hours season at my office so my weekend started off Friday at 11 am.  We work an extra hour per day in order to leave early on Friday.  I go in early on Friday too so that I can leave at 11 am instead of noon so that I can go to lunch hour Masters lap swim at the Memorial Park Pool. 

This was my first week to go to Friday lunch swim.  I had been travelling the past two weeks since the pool had opened and missed those sessions.  The pool was full when I got there and I spent a few minutes trying to figure out which lane my friends were in.  The lap swim starts at 11am but I don't get there until 11:20 so I generally miss out on the warmup.  Friday I swam with Carie and AJ and we did one of Carie's workouts from her time in Omaha Masters club.  Carie keeps a stash of these workouts in a small Ziploc bag and she picks a new one out for each workout.  The workout we got included a bunch of 100m repeats and none of us knew what time to use for the interval since we haven't been swimming long course that much yet this summer.  We all started on a 2:00 min interval which we held pretty well for most of the first set of 6 x 100.  Between the 4th and 5th, we took a little more rest but then got back onto the interval.  Little did AJ and I know that there was another set of 100m and that they would need to be faster than the first set.  We talked it over with Carie and she thought we swam the first set too fast so we slowed it down to a 2:05 min interval for the next 5 x 100. It was a good workout and ended with an easy cooldown.  There is something great about circle swimming a tough workout with your friends! We were all business during our sets but we had fun between sets!

Saturday morning I headed out from my house for a run.  I had intended it to be my long run but I knew within a few steps that it was going to be a tough run.  It was warm and humid out and the hills around my house kicked my butt.  I just couldn't get my head in the game and overcome the external challenges.  I pushed myself to get a total of 4 miles which is better than nothing! After I finished I took my dog for a walk and got another mile in with her.  From there, I headed out to the lake for an open water swim with AJ.  We parked and saw that the swim beach was very different looking this year...there was no beach.  The water level in the lake is really high so the swim beach is somewhere under the water.  We were both a little concerned with all the geese hanging out in the area but luckily they didn't bother us any.  The swim went really well and we did two loops on a course that is an out and back.  We practiced sighting and buoy turns and were together for the first loop almost the entire way.  The second loop we held different lines but stayed on about the same pace the whole time. 

Sunday morning AJ and I met back up for a bike ride from the Arvest Ball Park in Springdale.  This is much closer to AJ's house so this is more of her territory than mine.  I've only ridden from that spot a few times but it is nice to mix it up and try out new routes and terrains.  We hadn't really discussed a route just wanting a distance of around 40 miles.  At 8am it was already super warm and sunny and we decided to stop at 10 mile increments for a water/snack break.  At our first stop, we talked about the lack of gas stations along this route and thought about what route changes we could do.  AJ thought she could put us on a loop course and she proclaimed that it would be 38 miles.  The saving grace for this route was that we would pass a gas station...perfect for a mid-ride Gatorade stop! We decided to switch to AJ's route and we soldiered on...enjoying the shade when possible.  We passed a couple funny sights.  The first was someone fueling up their car using a gas can in their yard.  The second was a farmer calling his cows to come home for feeding time.  It was something funny to hear him call out to the cows and them moo back.  In the end, our ride ended up exactly at 38 miles just as AJ had predicted.