A short vacation

My sis and bro-in law are coming to visit today! I'll be taking a few days off work and no days off of my training. Luckily my sis is a runner and fitness fanatic so she'll be training right along side of me. I mean right in front of me, she's much faster than I am.

Last night Claudia, Phil and I went to Shadow Scum Cliffs for one of the last swims we'll be able to do there this year. The water is rapidly disappearing, drying up, evaporating in our drought. Boats are no longer able to launch but for some reason yesterday they restocked the lake with fish. Huh? The only way to catch them now is to either wade out to the middle of the lake or stand on the shore with a long line. Of course, that meant that we'd have little fishie company during the swim. Claudia was not pleased.

We decided to swim 7 laps this week, increasing last week's swim by 1 lap. That's a total of 1960 yards, well over what we'll be swimming during our tri (well, not Phil - he'll be swimming more than us). The swim went very well for me, I was going straighter than I have been. As long as I was paying attention. When I got into swimming along and cruising happily and just going forward I'd veer off to one side. Then the other. So I need to keep my mind on what I'm doing, keep my mind on my form and sight constantly.

I've watched the Olympic swimmers and the women's triathlon and boy howdy, can they move! It surprises me that the form of some of the swimmers just looks wrong, but they power forward like torpedoes so it has to work for them. The swim part of the tri freaked the crap out of me, all of them swimming madly in a huge splashy crowd, often on top of each other, drafting right on the feet of the swimmers in front. It was interesting to see how they'd breathe to see the person next to them. I don't know how they did it without inhaling great gobs of the water that was splashing in their faces but I guess that's what makes them pros. It was intimidating and inspirational all at the same time.

Twelve years ago I went to a concert festival with my then boyfriend and developed a deep and abiding passion for the music of one of the bands that played that day, the Dave Matthews Band. Since then I've attended their concerts every year that they've played in the Bay Area, often going to both shows if tickets were available. I know many people scoff at their sound and popularity but their music touches something deep inside me. It was with great sorrow that I heard the following, taken directly from the band's website:

LEROI MOORE 1961-2008

08/19/2008

We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program.