Salty Dog

I decided to take the weekend off from training, since I felt like my body needed a little bit of a break.

Of course, I didn't get one, because we spent the whole weekend at the beach.

We had a wedding to attend in Wilmington on Saturday evening, so we headed down early that morning and played in the water the whole day.

The wedding was fun, but the best part was when we got up early on Sunday morning to go back to the beach.

Because that's when I actually swam in the ocean.

I have never felt comfortable in the ocean. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I always end up pummeled by the waves. Or maybe it's the fact that, every time I stand up after being pummeled by a wave, my bathing suit has been re-arranged into a most exposing and unflattering configuration. I always end up with salt water in my sinuses and burning the back of my throat, coughing and sputtering as one wave after another crashes over me.

But this time was different.

Maybe it's because I was wearing a sports bathing suit instead of a few little bits of fabric haphazardly tied together. Maybe it was because I had my goggles on, so I could comfortably open my eyes underwater and see where I was going. Maybe it was because the weather was so perfect and the waves were so glassy.

Whatever the reason, I swam in the ocean on Sunday and I liked it.

I might even go so far as to say I loved it.

Because one thing I'd never appreciated about the ocean is how fabulously buoyant one becomes in salt water.

And that, my friends, is something that makes swimming a lot more fun. Since I didn't have to worry about sinking, I could actually pay attention to my stroke, could notice how my elbow wasn't quite as high on recovery as I'd like, could focus on slicing my hand into the water at just the right angle to encourage good body rotation and all of that.

That was amazing. And then I boogie boarded for three hours straight. Which was fun, too.

Not exactly the break I was planning for though. I told myself that, since I wasn't biking or running, it didn't REALLY count as exercise and I could still say that I'd taken a rest day. No matter that I had a giant rash all over my belly and was so tired on the ride home that I didn't want to expend the energy required to get out of the car and walk into the house.

The complete idiocy of that approach made itself fully clear when I tried to do a bike-run brick on Monday morning and completely bonked halfway through the run. Seriously, I had to walk most of the run and even that was hard. I kept stumbling over my own feet because it was just too much effort to lift them any higher.

But I took a real break on Tuesday and had a nice interval run yesterday. Today I got back in the pool and while I still wasn't as fast as I'd like, I was a lot smoother and more comfortable. And instead of focusing on speed, I tried to get my stroke length down, which was a nice change of pace and probably smarter in the long run.

The only problem now is that all I can think about is getting back to the beach and back on my boogie board!