Open water swims, German Shepherds, and heat!

So yesterday was the first real brick workout of the season that included an open water swim.  I am not a huge fan of open water swims, I suck at sighting, and I don't like not being able to see in the water.  I need to get a lot better at open water swims though because I go from swimming 1:20 100's to 2-3 min 100's.  No me guesta.  I would probably be a lot faster if I could swim in a straight line though.  Red and I went swimming at Caesar's Creek, it's a lake, I didn't name it, and he says "just sight off of me".  Sure!  That sounds like a great idea!  Ok, well I put him and the bouys on my left because I breath on my left.  This worked for about 20 yards when I was like "hmm...I can still see them but they seem to be getting smaller." Yep, that's because I was swimming off at an angle to the right.  Ok, I'll correct a little bit, well then Red is laughing because I apparently swam in front of him, remember he was on my far left, and nearly ran into a bouy which was even farther left.  Red was cracking up watching me swim zig zags all over the swimming area.  We finally turn around and I start heading out and attempt to sight off of Red again.  Yet another fail.  I almost swam onto the beach! So, a long story short I suck at sighting and need A LOT of work!  On a positive note I was able to successfully get my new wet suit on and not feel like I was going to die or feel weird!

After the swim we changed out of the wet suits, humerous, then grabbed our bike stuff and headed out. The route was really really nice and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  Lots of country roads, pretty houses, and rolling hills.  We found a nice ridiculous hill that as soon as I looked at it I had a roll of expletives coming out of my mouth and even more foul thoughts in my head.  Once we were to the top though it wasn't too bad.  The most exciting parts about our ride were when Red threw a water bottle at me and an impromptu sprint from a giant german shepherd.  Ok, Red didn't really throw a water bottle at me, but his bike and water bottle cage did!  We hit a bump and his rear water bottle decided that it wanted to land in my lap/the grass next to me.  We eneded up stopping and getting the water bottle, but I still found it humerous that he thought my cages were too loose and he's the one that lost the bottle.  Later we ran into a group riding for diabetes, at least that's what their jerseys said, and they were pretty cool.  We rounded a corner though and Red was in the lead, therefore he became the prime target of a giant black german shepherd.  The dog's owner was mowing the lawn when Fido decided that he wanted to come bounding after us, maybe charging is a better word.  Bounding sounds like he wanted to play and I'm positive that was the last thing on this dog's mind. 

Yes the dog chasing Red had a muzzle, but the dog was all black and very ticked off!



After that excitement we finished our bike ride and decided to go on our run.  It was about 93 degrees and the route we went had very little in the way of shade.  Initially things weren't too bad but then it was very very hot!  Once I built up my momentum and my legs decided to agree with me then running wasn't too bad.  I was actually enjoying it but then we got to a shaded section and decided to stop for a minute.  Once we stopped there was very little in the way of getting started back up for a while.  It took us 35 minutes to do 3.1 miles. I completely forgot to stop my watch when we were in the shade for a couple of minutes but I'm pretty positive that in the best situation we still averaged 10min/mile.  Meh.  Not great but considering the heat and the fact that we swam and biked beforehand I'll accept it.  I'm hoping that next time we can improve on that though!

Swim: 1/2 mile

Bike: 28.5 miles

Run: 3.1 miles

Happy Training!