Feeling Lucky?

This morning I joined some friends from my TNT team and swam Lucky's Lake. It was a great experience and put me in a rather chipper mood, despite the need to straighten the house, pick up medicine from the pharmacy, bring $5 to daycare, do the grocery shopping, try to fit in some shoe and clothing shopping (both good and bad thing about tri training - not having clothes that fit), pack for our trip this weekend, and oh yes - work a full day. It's funny how a fun and new experience can put a "my life is wonderful" spin on things even when you have so much to do!

Lucky's Lake. The lake is touted as one of the top 10 cleanest in Florida and it was great. It was relatively warm as lakes go and you could see better and farther than the other 2 lakes I've swum in. There were turtles and fish too. Somedays there are alligators, but not today. Other than the 2 stone alligators at the edge of the lake that I (in the early morning light and being half awake) thought at first were real. And the water smelled much better than any of the other lakes I've ventured forth in, although there still was some sort of earthy smell to it.

The swim. The swim would have been perfect if not for my google issues on the first traverse. They were fogging up like steam from a hot shower was infiltrating the lenses. So, I ended up sighting on a white thing that turned out to be a boat not the beach shed I thought it was. Part way across I realized I was going the wrong way and tried to clean out the fog on my lenses.. and my goggles broke. I caught them before they sank, though. At this point, I was pretty much in the dead center of the lake and the water is deep. The rest of the 1st traverse was pretty slow after that because I was swimming with my eyes closed and with my goggles in my hand, sighting while swimming breast stroke instead of the closed eye freestyle. Luckily, the goggles were broken in such a way that I could tie the strap and make them functional. I met up with Beth, Ryan and Gabe at the beach, fixed the goggles, watched a bald eagle get a nice big fish out of the lake for breakfast, and then swam back across the lake. What more can you ask for than an amazing sight like that? The 2nd leg was so much easier with goggles and super fast. At one pont when I was turning my head to breathe, I saw another bird swoop down about 10 feet away and grab a fish. Super cool.

After the swim, I got to sign Lucky's wall and he gave me a patch and a bumper sticker. Too fun. I will be trying t work this swim into my schedule when I can. Not only was it fun, but it was a good learning experience too. I learned that even when things don't go the way you want or you're having problems (thanks to my goggle saga), you can still make it work and have a good time doing it. And celebrating even small accomplishments, like swimming 1K across a lake, is something that should not be overlooked. I forget to celebrate my accomplishments, or at the very worst do not acknowledge how much I have accomplished (even if it is just folding and putting away 4 loads of laundry when you're very tired) because I'm off to the next thing that "has to get done." Stop and smell the roses, indeed. Or, in my case, stop and swim Lucky's!

There wil be a small hiatus on the blog as we are getting away for the weekend for our friend Lauren's wedding. A wonderful occasion and our first weekend alone since the girls were born. So, until the next post...