We haven’t seen the sun since we stopped at South of the Border on Friday, but it’s warm here so I’m not complaining.
January 1, 2014 and the forecast is for rain pretty much all day.

I committed to swim as part of Mat Hudson’s TI Virtual Group Swim on New Year’s Day so off I went. It would have been very easy to stay on the couch with some coffee this morning. Thanks for getting me out the door, and it was wonderful to be swimming with someone half way around the world in Turkey!
The North County Aquatic Center was not crowded at all when I got there, just a couple of lap swimmers and two club swimmers in the lane next to me.


Good memories when got a cap from my bag, I found the swim cap from an open water mile swim race in Costa Rica. I didn’t really do my homework on picking a practice for today, after my tune up and the constant tempo set I realized that my planned practice wasn’t going to work out — can’t do 75s or 125s in a 50 meter pool. I also realized that I was feeling some fatigue from Monday’s swim so I just eliminated that part of the practice and finished up with a 200 for a total of 2600 meters again today. I used focal points during my tune up and cool down — head position, relaxed arms, breathing, kick. I’m feeling particularly slow in the pool but I’m also assuming that with patience and practice a better pace will return. About mid-way through today’s swim I realized that what my arms were doing in the water need some work — I cycled thru focusing on keeping my elbows up, keeping a patient lead arm and a good catch. When I did this, and remembered to really open up my axilla I noticed a slight improvement in my pace. I’m going to bring my video camera to swim on Friday and do some video of myself.
I’m hoping the rain stops and I can do some biking tomorrow.