Running Joke...

So I'm at the two year mark for my half-Ironman and I'm a bit off balance in my training. Swimming is actually progressing well enough, thought I feel compelled to vent about this weekend's pool time adventure.

Saturday morning, up at 8:30 and at the pool by 10 or so. Went to the John's Creek LA Fitness since it was near Kohl's and I needed shoes. I did go there for my first two years of race training and for some reason I don't remember the pool being so small, but I digress.

I'm in the second stage of my warm up, the underwater fin swim when I find that the wall of my lane has become bumpy and soft. Did you guess? It wasn't a wall at all! No! It was a very rude Korean woman who decided to avail herself of my lane without asking. I bumped right into her legs and then stood up, very much at a loss for words and said "Oh, hi". It was meant to contain all of the shock and incredulity I was feeling at her swimming pool faux pas, instead she just stared at it me with a blank look as if it were a cordial greeting.

Wait... it gets better. So I take off my fins and begin swimming in earnest when she produces a pool noodle and begins frog paddling down the MIDDLE OF THE LANE!!!!

I'm sorry, I know I sound like an octogenarian grousing about the store being out of prunes but seriously, there is such a thing as lane etiquette when using a lap pool. So, being the gentle, kindly soul I am I just swam like normal. That's right, when I crossed her path I just plowed right through her. I didn't stop to say "Oh, excuse me madame" I simply swam on my side of my usurped lane as any polite swimmer would and when our limbs crossed she got the raw end of the deal.

Guess how many times it took for her to get the picture. You're wrong, it actually took three.

Now, I could actually mention that to our right there was a man doing laps and his daughter was goofing off doing handstands and flopping into my lane repeatedly, or that on our left two people, a man and woman, were standing in one end of the lane, flirting and talking real-estate theory instead of using the LAP POOL to swim LAPS. But I won't, I'll just say that I'm going to stick to my home pool up on Windward and leave it at that.

Since I'm effectively dry-docked for two weeks I'll have to actually address my running and riding problems, which are simply that I'm not training hard enough at either. Today's little jaunt on the silver comet showed that.

Oh well, who knows, maybe in two years I'll look back on this and say "That was the week I changed my regiment and became a CHAMPION!!!!

Geez, that even hurt to type. Being a realist at heart, I'm really hoping I can just cross the finish line after 70.3 miles. I guess that makes me mediocre.

That's ok, the only really sucky thing about mediocre is that it's crowded.