I Quit Winter

I've had enough of coldness and rainy days and sweaters and gloves. I can't even roll my window down at a drive-thru without my Raynauds kicking in. I just want to go outside and run with no north wind making my last 11 minutes up Mud Island a tear-inducing, chin-numbing experience, like it was yesterday. Yesterday's high was approximately 35 degrees colder than Tuesday. So not only is it still winter, but we get teased by spring every so often, just making it that much worse when we have to dig out those sweaters we already put away again.

But the conditions at the downtown Y pool remain the same: warm and humid with good artificial lighting. There are always 4-5 people in each lane by the time I get there at 5:40(ish), and they've finished all but 100 or so yards of warm up. The water's always the same temperature; I'm guessing it's about 82F. It feels slightly cool when you first jump in, but gets to feeling a little warm by the main set. If I'm in Barb's lane, she'll be insisting on going last. Jonathan's always smiling and going last (ahem, skipping out) on the kick sets, and MC shows up later than I do- yay, I'm not last! I have to have Rob repeat the set instructions at least three times to get through to my foggy brain. Sometimes I throw everybody off by getting there at 5:30; I don't think they recognize me then. I manage to stand around and chat or adjust my goggles on those days until I've missed the warm up anyway. After swim is a hot shower while chatting with Damie in the next shower over, then it's off to a reward coffee before spin. It's all very routine, but that's part of why I like it.

Swimming seems to be the only training I blog about lately. Probably because my training mostly consists of swimming and a little running here and there. The next two weekends will be filled with racing, though, and there will be hours and hours to report about. The Little Rock half marathon is Sunday, which hopefully will not be multiple hours long, and will also hopefully have me finishing smiling and with a huge pink diamond in hand, if not a ginormous check to go with it like last year.

Upon scrutiny of this picture, I'm relieved to see that my left quad had a large dent in it last year at this time. For weeks I've been worrying that it's a new oddity. What a relief.

The weekend after the half marathon is the Natchez Trace Adventure Race in Jackson, which, as the name implies, should provide hours of adventure and maybe some racing thrown in. I may leave that race reporting up to Charlie, who seems to be able to remember event details even while extremely dehydrated and/or miserable. Me, I get a little hypoglycemic and my mind blanks out. Protective mechanism. That's why I keep going back for more.