Weekend Adventures

This nice three day weekend has had its share of adventures that have been pretty fun. The weekend, while packed has been also equally low key. I'm not sure how I achieved such a great balance, but it did work out that way.

Friday: Swim Fishy Swim

Friday morning I headed down for some open water swimming to yet reconfirm my LOVE of my new wetsuit. People were already all camped out all over the beach for the 4th festivities...at SEVEN IN THE MORNING. People seriously...come on. But I guess that is how it goes around here...you want to be on the beach for the fourth you must fully commit. I on the other hand had decided to STAY AWAY from such insanity for that day. I got a nice mile swim in, but can I just say KELP SUCKS!! It freaks me out a little and it is gross and it just sucks and for a good part of the swim you have to go through basically a kelp farm. BLECH. But aside from the freaky kelp the swim was really good. The rest of my 4th was pretty good too.

Saturday: Riding urban style

I live in a fairly 'urban' part of SD. It's not littered with bike lanes and I'm not too far from true 'down town' and there are lot-o-stop lights. Some days I'm not a huge fan of where I live because I am not as close to great places to bike to be perfectly honest, but I do also like where I live so I am always debating whether to move or not. On Thursday after my little lack of clipping out debacle that gave me a pretty massive bruise on my knee with a nasty scrape I had pretty much HAD it with living where I do. I don't know what the connection between the bike crash and my dislike for living in such an urban area really is since I was NO WHERE down town and riding near my apt when I fell...but somehow in my little head there was a connection. Can't think of what it is at the moment. Anyway, I digress...so recently I found another person in my neighborhood who wanted to bike around in my part of town. So i thought 'sure why not' might be fun not to have to drive somewhere to go for a bike ride. So on Sat I roll out my door and met up with my new riding partner.

Now we had discussed a little biking and running and stuff...mainly just looking for other people in our part of town to train with. I didn't really think that I would end up riding with this person as he is a much stronger cyclist that I am...so I didn't really want to hold him back, but he seemed to want to meet up anyway and go for a ride in my part of town. So i'm game to meet new people to train with and head out.

I'm going to refer to him from now on as Mr. Hills...as that was his constant suggestions "do you know this hill? We should go do it...or that hill??" Now granted living in the city, since you have to stop all the time for tons of freaking stop lights hill training is really good because you end up getting a killer workout in even if it appears you didn't go very fast since you had to stop for every stop light. But as we are flying through downtown heading down to the Pt. Loma and the coast I am starting to feel I'm in that Kevin Bacon movie Quicksilver. Except as we ride down the hills and through the urban environment I am internally screaming like a little girl. Not flying through intersections and track standing at stop lights (although that would be a REALLY useful trick to know in the city) like they do in the movie. In fact my riding didn't resemble anything as graceful as some of that bike handling in that movie, but flying through an urban environment gave me at least the feeling that might have been.

I'm not opposed to urban riding and oddly I can do it when I am with other people quite comfortably, but sometimes by myself I'm not too keen. Weird. I know. But in the end the ride was really good. Lots of hills. I thought I was going to have to cold water bath my legs by the end, but didn't and feel fine today even after then proceeding to take up a new sport that evening.

Saturday night: New 'Sport'???

Is salsa dancing considered a sport? I donno, but by the end of Sat night it felt like it should be. And actually this morning I was starting to ponder why my right arm is sorta stiff and sore and I realized that too much swinging around in circles can do that to ones' arm. It was a seriously fun evening. Unfortunately my planned long run has suffered due to this new endeavor. But no matter, I'm in a spot with training that that isn't too big of a deal.

I think I have finally decided on some races this fall. I am really thinking of OC tri Oly at the end of Sept and I guess I'm going to default to the Silverstrand 1/2 mary mainly because I don't want to travel at the moment for the races. Training will start to take some actual shape on that soon as I attempt to plan that out at the moment. I will throw down some sprints in between...possibly one this up and coming weekend and some other fun mixed in here and there. It will come together and it is bit by bit.