Sweet swim on smooth water and more flip flops

It felt so good to get back in the water after, gosh, over a week. I did my swim at 7:30 tonight and I was the first on in the pool for the lap swim. Its such an awesome sensation to take the first strokes in smooth water. Everything is crystal clear, calm and it seems like you could swim perfectly...forever. Then you flip to come back and the light is scattered all over place from the waves above, moment over. Had a good swim tonight, a little tuckered out by the end and still can't seem to get the flip turns down. I have a couple good scrapes on my right elbow from hitting the bottom of the pool, my flip is still going too deep. Also got a lot of water up my nose on one turn which, due to the way your muscles react to this, seem to some how make breathing difficult/awkward for a few strokes. The joys of learning flip turns.

I cannot tell a lie

Following in the steps of our first president...I can not tell a lie. My run time last night around Portage Bay was 39 seconds slower than my last run. I'm not too surprised though, I hadn't run in over a week. No more will I take so much "rest time" even if I am a little under the weather...I'll at least take a walk, a bike or something to keep up the activity. Actually, I thought I would be slower by a lot more than 39 seconds, so it wasn't so bad.

More Kenmore

Went up to the Kenmore shooting range again this morning to take in a little more shooting. Met some new people, got some more good advice on weapons and starting shooting and learned a little about scoring. I'm really looking forward to starting up as soon as I return from Sydney. Still haven't decided which air pistol I want, a Walther, Steyr or a Feinwerkbau. It really all depends on whether I want CO2, condensed air or a pump. Hopefully, some time with some other pentathletes in Sydney will help me narrow down what will work best for me.

You always hear athletes, or anybody trying to reach a major goal I guess, say that getting there is as important as meeting the goal. One of the things that I really enjoy is the many people I meet along the way in my training. The horse crowd is very different than the shooting crowd is very different from the running crowd, etc. Diverse, interesting people with so much to offer and a willingness to share their knowledge and skills. I can honestly say, even though my far-out chance at the Olympics is still four years away, that this is the most incredible time of my life. I'm sure it will only get better as the years go on. Stay tuned...

Down for the count and a little more Vesty

Looks like my website was down for a couple days...that's OK because I was too. Seems I got a two day flu or something. Certainly didn't feel like doing any training so there wouldn't have been much to say even if the sight had been up. But, I noticed there were a LOT of hits yesterday when the site finally came back up, so I know there area few fans out there.

Didn't have much energy yesterday to swim due to the quick flu thing, but I did go to riding in the evening. I was also starting to feel a little better by then, getting more of my energy back. I rode Vesty again tonight. We're still working on things, but we're doing much better. I do have a couple bad habits that I bring from polo that aren't helping. First, I tend to lean into the canter transition...helps in polo but not a good habit to develop for my jumping. In addition, in polo I'm used to pushing forward in a canter transition until I get a canter...no big deal on the polo field, but in my riding this shows up in during that transitions as well. When I don't get the canter and Vesty goes into a fast trot I keep asking for the canter rather than bringing him back and getting a good trot for a good canter. I also seem to be squeezing my thighs a little too much, which to Vesty means a half halt. Vesty stops or slows down, I fall forward and our balance gets way off. By the end of the lesson, we had things working well though, Laura was pretty pleased.

The good swim

I really didn't expect to swim today. I got home at 12:00am the night before (from Spokane) and had to get up at 4:00am to go to work. I even skipped my Tuesday ride because I was so tired. But, after a good nap and a lot of waffling back and forth, I decided to go. It turned out to be a great swim. I took another 2 seconds off my 100m time and felt really good through all of the drills. During the warmup, I could tell it had been a while since I last swam, but this feeling went away quickly. I still need a lot of work on those pesky flip turns, but they are coming along slowly.

I didn't make it to yoga tonight. I had every intention of going up to an hour before, but got engrossed in doing something and didn't notice the time until 7:30. I'll try again on Saturday.

Spokane polo

I was Virginia's groom this weekend at the Spokane tournament. It was a great weekend! Met a lot of great people and saw some awesome polo. I warmed up Waco, one of Virg's two horses, on Saturday but that was the only riding I did over the weekend. It was actually really nice just to slow down and enjoy the game. As usual there were some incredible meals and parties in the evenings.

The nine goal polo on Monday was amazing...I've decided that I definitely don't want to play at that level any time soon. Polo at this level is very physical (as in crashing into each other) and I'm not to keen on getting hurt in polo at this point in my pentathlon training. But my how its great to watch! One of the highlights of the weekend was Augustine, one of the Argies that stuck around to play some more polo this summer after the larger group of Argentines went home. At 19 years old, Augustine has servants in his home and several grooms to take care of his polo ponies in Argentina. Well...here he had to stay in a cold, went tent and do his own grooming. But he smiled the whole time, especially when George Dill pulled the tent out of the box and called it Augustine's "Estancia in a box".

Highway running in Spokane

I was in Spokane, WA for a Labor Day weekend polo tournament...grooming and tacking for some friends. On Sunday, we had a long break in the morning schedule, so I slipped away, put on my running shoes and headed out for my long run that I usually do on weekends. This time, I was scheduled to do an 80 minute run. I haven't done much work at any kind of elevation (not that Spokane is that high at 2500 feet), so I wasn't sure how it would go...would I make the whole 80 or settle for an hour? The route was completely flat, so that was one good variable. I ran out along for 40 minutes...no problems. The 40 minutes back were just fine too. Yee Haw, I did the whole 80 minutes...even after a biscuits and gravy breakfast at the Longhorn restaurant just across the road from the polo field. I didn't get a long swim in over the weekend, but it was a holiday anyway, I deserve a break now and then. Back to the regular schedule on Tuesday.