Girly tough!

I've had a few tough days getting my training in this week, but I was determined to redeem myself in the pool today.  I even painted my toenails blue last night to give me a little extra motivation.  Silly, I know, but it kept me thinking about it all morning and couldn't wait to get to the pool.  Whatever works?!  I'm thinking I'll end up with blue-painted toes for Ironman Texas now, too! :)  And, of course, wore my girly-skull swim cap (available here) to keep things fun.

Blue toes for the pool

So, this was a big deviation from my training plan, so I apologize to Don Fink and accept full responsibility if I crash and burn because of my non-compliance to your carefully crafted training plan.


2.4 miles - 85 laps.   The furthest I have swum to date is 60 laps.  Crazy? Maybe.  A huge mental boost?  Abso-freakin'lutely!  

I had missed a couple of lunch time workouts due to work functions this week, so I used some of that time to get this swim in.

It went awesome!  I was lucky that there were a couple of decently good swimmers that came and went during my swimming time-  thank you gentlemen for swimming with me when you didn't know that you actually were...  The laps went by fairly quickly. I started to feel a little slow at around lap 70, but then I realized that there were only 15 more to go, so I got my head back in the game.  Especially when I knew I was going to finish faster than my conservative guesstimate swim time of 1:30.

I finished in 1:24.  Looking at the swim pace, I think I may have double counted a lap or two, but I'll take it.  When I finished, I was alone in the pool.  I kind of wished I had someone there with me, because I really felt like I did after I finished my first marathon.  A little on the emotional side - because I had just accomplished - what was to me- a big goal.  So, yes, I shed a couple of tears.  Only a couple - and only out of the left eye.  It probably had more to do with the pain that the goggles had caused from sucking to my face for that long, but nonetheless, I was excited.  For someone that had only learned how to really swim 2 years ago (for my first sprint triathlon), achieving a 2.4 mile swim was a big deal.

Can't wait to get a few more of these done and especially some in open water.