Who needs sleep?

Apparently not me. After awakening at 4am, tossing and turning for an hour, I decided that enough was enough and I might as well get up and be productive. Yep, productive on about 4 hours sleep. Probably not happening. I think some time about noon my head will crash down on my desk and I'll sleep for another hour.

We discovered last night that the swim lane at Shadow Cliffs is 140. I'm not certain 140 what; meters or yards? We use meters and yards somewhat indiscriminately, although they really aren't quite the same. A meter is 1.09 yards, a yard is .914 meters. A true Olympic pool is 25 meters across but I'm not sure how many of the school pools are true Olympic because our training measurements are in yards. So I'll proclaim it yards since the last time I checked the US never quite made it over to the metric standard.

The swim last night was hard. I wasn't in optimal condition since I tweaked my lower back at track. Many advil later it wasn't screaming, but it hurt. Add in tired, worn out arms from both the swim Tuesday night and the circuit drills on Wednesday and I knew the swim would be challenging. I just didn't realize how challenging.

I struggled to get across even one length. One little 140 yard length. Sheesh, I was doing much better than that the last time we went there. When we started the air was a very toasty 90-ish degrees and it was much easier to get in the water. The water was still cold, freezing in spots and warmer in others. In fact, there were times it felt like I was swimming straight from ice through someone's pee. You're welcome, I'm sure that's a visual you'll treasure.

Since our workout schedule called for 2250 yards we decided to swim 8 laps (16 lengths). That seemed pretty questionable after one little length but we persevered. I was having great luck keeping my feet up but I was totally unable to swim straight. I think my back ache had me arching my back exactly correctly to keep my feet up. Very strange. But I have rope burns on my arms from repeatedly smashing into the lanes and I was lucky I didn't end up at the other side of the lake. Normally I angle right but last night I was zigging and zagging back and forth. I'm pretty sure that the lane was more like 180 yards, the way I was going so far out of my way.

Claudia was a stud, back and forthing with nary a pause. Phil and I were just a bit wimpier and we stopped for a short break at the end of every length. At the end of every lap we decided that the next one would be the very last lap but we kept going; either he'd take off or I would and the other would follow. On the 12th length my right leg cramped up and after a couple of futile kicks, my left decided to join in the fun. I tried to just kick it out but ended up flipping on my back and just sculling along. Which depressingly seemed just as fast as I'd been swimming. When I swam through a warmer patch the cramp eased and I flipped back over and finished the lap.

During the 7th lap my calves kept cramping up and that made swimming even more challenging, to say the least. I knew I wasn't going to drown and surprisingly flipping onto my back again and again to ease the cramps didn't slow me down, but I decided not to take chances. Claudia had lapped us at some point and finished all 8 scheduled laps but Phil and I decided to call it a day and end with 7. Since that was 1960 yards we felt we had one hecka workout!

I can't believe the Tri For Fun is in one week. I'm so deeply in denial about that. I'm glad we swam there for an hour because the 400 yard swim in the tri will be cake, even with the crowds. Too bad we'll have to ruin it with a bike ride and run!

The sunrise this morning was lovely. I think all the fires in the area have spewed so much schmootz into the atmosphere that the sky is so nicely colored. Not so good for breathing but made my insomnia almost worthwhile. Almost.