Friday

Good morning! It is Friday, you know. It's going to be a busy one, but the reward at the end of the day for me is spending some time with Cora. That is probably my favorite thing to do.

Yesterday was a good one. I got a lot of work done in the morning. It was productivity defined and measured in different ways, reflecting a variety of activities. That set me up to feel good, which set me up to have a couple of good workouts.

I left work a little after noon and headed out to the Park. I got on my bike, experiencing a fairly significant northeast wind, and headed out for around 25 miles. I came back with exactly 26. I fought the wind heading east and then enjoyed a nice ride back west. Then I turned north and just worked my way back in. It was a decent ride, a Kestrel in flight, a little Afternoon Delight.

After the ride I had enough time to go home and unload the bike and change into my swim gear. It's nice to have good friends in good places, like Crane. John H picked me up outside the gate, and we headed onto base, to the lake. There we met Rand and Brent. We donned our wet-suits and headed into the water.

I worked on a few things while in the water. Each lap is about a mile, so there is plenty of time to try fix things. I talked to Jimmy and Roy some about my swimming. Jimmy told me, "Push your buoy and elongate your vessel." Now before you let your mind wander (stop laughing!), this is the language of total immersion swimming. I tried to do those two things, plus kick a little better. The result was a 9 minute improvement over my only other time in the lake at Crane.

Nine minutes is huge. It reflects a very poor first swim there, but it also shows that technique is my main problem. The good news is I can work on technique all the way to Ironman, even while tapering on the bike and the run. It could make a big difference in the kind of day I have on November 1.

OK, I hope to squeeze 13 miles in this morning before an appointment at 9 a.m. I best get going! Tomorrow I hope to find 75 miles on the bike.