Swim, Family, Bike!

Last night's swim was a good one.  I picked the Little Ladies up from daycare and they must have been ready to go because they ran over and hugged me and were super excited to see me, took my hand, and we walked right out.  It was great!  Then we were in the car and they wanted to know why we weren't going home.  So I explained that we were meeting Mr. Darcy at the pool and he was going to take them to dinner while I swam.  Ladybug decided that she wanted to watch me swim, and I told her it was up to Mr. Darcy.
We talked about their days and what they did at school, and Angelfish informed me she will be marrying Holland.  I asked her what happened to Connor the seeming love of her life and she said "He wants to marry Ladybug."  Oh dear.  Ladybug says that she is going to marry Connor too.  The love lives of these girls is hard to keep up with.  We got to the pool and Mr. Darcy was right behind us, so it worked out nicely and the girls were off with Daddy for some dinner.

Coach Geni had spent the weekend with Dave Scott learning all sorts of new swim drills and goodies, so she ran practice and had us do one of the drills I hate and have done before.  We started witha 400m warm up.  Then 400m of 4 drills.  First, the one I hate... It's where you have to hold a tennis ball under your chin and take as many strokes as you can before breathing, chase down the ball, replace it under your chin and keep going.  It's not necessarily a hard drill for me to do, but I don't like having to chase down the ball because it ruins my rhythm.  I'm pretty good at keeping my head in the right position, I think.  Next was the catch up drill and then swimming with tennis balls in your hand, and then kicking.  Then it a 30 minute timed swim where we just counted how far we went in the allotted time.  I did a 1200 in the 30 minutes, but stopped 1 1/2 minutes early because they wanted me to get a swimming suit off the bottom of the pool.  I had really wanted to get to at least 1300, but 1200 is good too. (No worries - it wasn't mine.  Mine was still securely on my body.) But I had a nice swim.  I was in a rhythm and even sped up toward the end.  And then a 200 cool down. 

When I got out of the pool, though, I was starving!  I had to get the kiddies from Mr. Darcy so he could return to work for a project that he's going after this week, so off I went to Jason's Deli... where they were in the car watching Sleeping Beauty.  I teased them and said I was surprised they were watching that because they never want to watch it, to which Angelfish replied "You are a silly Mommy!" The girls adore that movie and it is one of my least favorite of the Princess movies.  Heck, I'd rather watch Ratatouille or The Incredibles or Toy Story than a Princess Movie, but somehow I got 2 little girls who LOVE the Princesses.  Perhaps that's why they're always talking about who they're going to marry.  I never wanted to get married until Mr. Darcy convinced me otherwise and I was quite a bit older than 3 1/2... but anyway.

I had a "smaller portioned" Pollo Mexicano Baked Potato.  It was still really big.  But I was starving so I ate every last bite and had a nice big glass of Gatorade (due to evil foot cramping during my cool down) when I got home.  The girls and I put on our pajamas, read a story and went to sleep!

I heard the alarm clock ring for the 1st time at 6:30 am.  YIKES!  Mr. Darcy worked until 1 am last night and evidently had been turning off the alarm clock the second it beeped ever since 5:30, and I hadn't heard it once until then. 

Of course the good news in all of this is two fold: I slept an entire night and there were no little people that climbed into the bed with us during the night.  The bad news was that we were running late.  Way late.

But the girls got up pretty nicely and dressed and stalled and finally got out the door much later than we generally needed but it was still a nice morning.  It was drizzling at the house, so instead of getting on the slick roads I went to the Y and did 25 miles on the stationary bike... in exactly 67 minutes.  It's always amazing to me that I can go so "fast" on the the stationary bike.  It would be a dream come true for me to do 25 miles on my beloved Aerodite in 67 minutes.  But I at least got 25 miles in.  It wasn't exactly what Coach had planned (a 90 minute ride with some speed work), but for this morning it was all I had time for.

The good news is that I chatted with Mr. Darcy via email and told him that there is 1 month and 2 days until St. Anthony's and it's an A race for me, not to mention it's a Team in Training event where I'm a mentor and unless there is a crash or other accident (God forbid), it'd be rather embarrassing not to finish.  So I explained that I need to commit myself big time to my training and get done what is on the schedule every day from here on out and that I was asking him to kick me out of the house if we have oversleeping days and for him to step up and get the kids ready the rest of the way.  He said he would, so now it's time to implement it!

Next up - more work (since I wrote this on my lunch), a Junior League meeting, time with the family after the meeting (hopefully), and a run tomorrow morning...