A Beautiful Friday Morning

I left the house a little late for my morning swim, but it was beautiful out.  So beautiful that I didn't mind running a bit late today.  With not a cloud in the sky, a slight pink left in the sky as the sun continued to rise and mist rising from the neighborhood "lakes" and pools of water from the recent rains.  (I tried not to think about the mosquitos that might be about in a few weeks from the pooled water... we had some flooding in the grass areas in the neighborhood but it's starting to go down.)  Gorgeous.

Even better is that no one was on the road thanks to the combination of Good Friday and Spring Break.  It's an interesting thing.  I lived in the Bible belt for 10 years, and never worked for a law firm or company that gives Good Friday off, but here in Florida (which is not deemed to be part of the Bible belt for some odd reason) it seems like most of the people we know either have off or have a half day.  I do not share in either of these benefits, but I have other benefits with my work so I'm not complaining.

So with quiet roads, I was parked, checked in, and swimming in 20 minutes.  It usually takes 20 minutes just to drive there.  Even better was that all those people who weren't on the road also weren't at the gym.  So I had the entire pool to myself for 4/5 of the time.  And the other 1/5 of the time it was a woman soaking her feet in the highly chlorinated pool about 2 lanes over from me.

The swim was great!  My back twinged a little at first, but this time I only hit the lane ropes twice and it was during the warm up while doing backstroke. (I forgot my kickboard so I alternated 50m free, 50m back for my warm up and cool down.)  By the end of my 200 m warm up, my little twinging was gone.  So I started my 4x 400 descending.  I did 2 and started the 3rd, but I got into such a great rhythm and I felt so good that I couldn't bear to stop so I ended up doing an 800.  It was awesome.  I was in a rhythm and the water was making the perfect swush, swush, chug that I love to hear when I swim.  My mind was blank just counting the lengths of the pool and thinking about how blue the water looked - and how chlorinated it was.  They must have chlorinated it that very morning.  I felt so great that I sprinted the last 25m of the 800.  Recovered, and then did my 200m c/d that felt like nothing after the 800. 

That's when I noticed that the old guys in the hot tub had been watching me swim.  The one guy asked if I was a college athlete or something.  I had to laugh at that because I know I do not look like a college kid.  Of course, high school kids look like 12 year olds to me, and this man was a good bit older than I am so that might have been what it was.  I thanked him and said no, that I'm a triathlete in my spare time.  And he said, "Well, you sure can swim." 

Between this guy, the lady's at the doctor's office, getting to be part of the Brooks ID Team, having a company ask if I'll review one of their products, feeling a lot more like myself after being on thyroid and B12 for 2 weeks, such a beautiful morning, and my sweet and adorable children (and Mr. Darcy, of course), this really has been a very good week!

And the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the sky is blue.  What more could a girl ask for?

Postscript: And the Ryder sunglasses and Gu samples that I won in KC's give away just arrived via fed ex!