Friday Swim

That was one of the nicest swims I’ve done in a long, long time. The air temperature was about 14 degrees. I don’t know water temperature, but the lake was warmer than the pool usually is. I got into the late at 4:45. The moon was full a couple of days ago, but it was still pretty full. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so the moonlight was bright. There was absolutely no wind. The surface of the lake was just like glass, from one end to the other. The far end is often like that, but it’s very unusual to see the entire lake that way. There wasn’t a soul around. The only thing breaking the silence was the occasional duck quacking.

I started off slowly towards the far (west) end of the lake. I stopped a few times as I was getting warmed up. At one point I realized I woke the birds up that sleep n the lake. I flipped over on my back at watched what looked like a thousand birds circling overhead against the dark grey sky. It was beautiful. I was able to sight off of the moon, catching it just ahead when I was pushing my head back in the water after taking a breath to the left. As long as I just caught a glimmer of it as my head went in the water again, I was on course. It was pretty interesting having something in the sky to sight off of for a change.

I took my usual 26 – 27 minutes to get to the far end of the lake. I couldn’t tell for sure. It was too dark for me to read my watch clearly! I stopped for a minute and then headed back. The sun had not broken the horizon yet. The lights on the side of the canoe club were very easy to see all the way back. As the sun started to come up, a whisper of a cloud steak turned bright red. It ended just over the canoe club, almost like an arrow pointing the way. Amazing!

I got back in my usual 1300 stroke in 22 minutes! I drove over to Timberlane to get a steam and a shower there for a change. I found it amusing that when I was driving back from my swim, the rest of the NYAC gang still had 5 minutes before their swim started. I saw a few of the old gang at Timberlane, but I guess Christine and Nadia were out running somewhere. I couldn’t find them before or after my shower.

I’ve got a pretty easy 45 minute bike and a lazy 15 minute run tomorrow morning. Resting up for the 100k of hills followed by a 2 hour run Sunday. I’m guessing that will be the last big workout before the 26th.