Above is a picture of my new Vortex 3 wetsuit. That is not me. I look much better in my Vortex 3 than this man...hehehe.
Yesterday my Tri Club sponsored an OWS on the San Jacinto River. It was at a fellow members house. They live right on the river and have a boat which was able to follow us just in case anyone had any problems.
So there are 8 of us standing on the dock in the 20mph winds and we are told the water temperature is only 65 degrees. We are all warm blooded Texans and this water temperature is what we would refer to as FREAKIN COLD! Well, we all say screw it and jump in and start swimming. The water was cold but my wetsuit was keeping me really comfortable -- it was just glorious!
Now for the fun part! We all begin swimming and we are in a part of the river I never even knew existed. It is deep and wide. Very cool. We are supposed to swim a 1/2 mile to a white house and I just figure I will follow the guys who were in front of me. Well, we are swimming directly into both the current and the wind. I have no idea how long I had been swimming for but it felt like a lot longer than the 20 or so minutes it should have taken me to get to the white house? Finally, we turn around and start heading back towards the starting point. I am still feeling really strong and after a little getting used to the new suit period I was in a nice groove. The trip back took us like 10 minutes!! With the current and the high winds at our back we were flying!!.
When we got back to shore Annie told me that when we first started it looked like we were all swimming in place. I told her it just didn't look like that it actually happened.
All in all it was a really good training day. My wetsuit is awesome. The extra buoyancy it gave me was amazing. I actually felt like it was cheating wearing the suit, just gliding along on top of the water!
This is the always needed RECOVERY WEEK of my training program. Today was a rest day and I took the free time to take my Quintana Roo apart and clean up all the components. My garage has become a bike shop (Steve predicted this BTW). I cleaned and degreased everything and the bike looks incredible right now. I almost do not want to ride it!
Despite the recovery week I am still going to have some fun. Thursday evening I am going to go with a group to Lake 288 and do another OWS. Then on Saturday morning my Tri Club is having another Duathlon (2mi/12mi/2mi) and after that a couple of us are going to go for another OWS. Good times this week!
Voice your Opinion Time:
I am thinking about doing a Sprint Tri on April 10th. It is a saltwater swim -500M, 12 mi bike and a 5k run. My only concern is that it would be 3 races over a 4 week period (April 3rd - Duathlon/April 10th - Sprint Tri/ April 24th - Olympic Tri). So fellow bloggers and Triathletes what say you - you have followed my training - do ya think I should do them all or should I skip the April 10th Sprint? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!!
Thanks for reading,
Jeff
