A strange confluence of events over the past week or two led me to the pool in the middle of the night. It all started when I swam a few yards at Gold’s Gym. Then my old Masters Swim Team coach sent an email saying he was back from living in Texas and wanted to have a reunion with some of the old swimmers. We had everyone that could make it over for a pot-luck dinner… and by the end of the night I had committed to swimming “at least once” in the morning. That morning was this morning. And this morning I realized that “morning” has a completely different definition than I thought it did.

We got up around 5:10. Practice started at 5:30. Somehow getting up at 5:10 was not early enough to get us in the water on time. I don’t think we were very late, but we were at least a little late. It was still pitch black outside when we got in the pool.

I swam in the same lane as my old coach, Dave. As our warm-up was ending, we were joined by Keena, a local triathlon coach. Having not been in the water for a real workout in several years, I was a little uncomfortable. Somehow Dave and Keena managed to drang and push me through the main set. There’s a lot of pressure to perform when you have a coach 10 seconds ahead of you and another coach 10 seconds behind you. Somehow I stayed alive.

The first hints that it may not be night after all came as we were warming down. The horizon was just starting to turn from black to purple. We finished up, dried off, and drove all the way home before the sun ever came up. That’s just not right. And somehow I’ve gotten myself on the hook to be back at practice on Tuesday, when we’ll be doing LCM (Long Course Meters), which is much harder than the SCY (Short Course Yards) we did today.

I didn’t take any notes, but here’s at least most of what we did today:

6 x 200 pull
12 x hammer-down
6 x 50 russian free
6 x 50 drill your-choice
12 x 25 kick @ 0:40
500 pull

I need to get a kick board. I wasn’t happy using my pull buoy as a kick board.