"I got the poo on me"

FINALLY! I got an open water swim. We went out to Percy Priest Lake (Hamilton Creek Marina) early this morning where we swam long OW swims last year. The lake was still very flooded even though it’s been nearly two weeks since the big flood. Kristin didn’t want me to go because “there’s still raw sewage spilling into the freshwater”. Surely there wasn’t enough in there to hurt us right? It’s a big lake. It was a big COLD lake too. First 5 mins were cold, but the wetsuit allowed me to warm up quick. We only spent about 20 mins out there since we’re racing on Saturday (and because there may have been poo in the water).

Hmm, first tri of the year… in two days. I am a little nervous, only because I haven’t really trained for the half ironman distance. I’ve been completely focused on ironman, so I’m not really sure how hard to go (or if I can even go at a faster than my planned IML race pace). I know some would say that a half should be easy if your training for a full, but I get all caught up in my splits. See, I should just have fun with it right? I’m not sure why I always get caught up in time and placing. Part of me wants to go “ALL OUT” and see what happens (obviously after I get out of the water) and the other part just wants to treat it like a hard brick workout so that I don’t need recovery time. I should keep IML as my focus and just enjoy this, but I know once I get out of that water and onto that bike, I’ll want to “make up time”. I honestly won’t know if I’m going to “race” this thing until I get warmed up on that bike and see how I feel. I went into the second half marathon of the year with that same mentality and ended up racing and incredible race (age group winner and 13th overall). So, I’ll post next week whether or not I decided to “race”.