288 June 28, 2008
Posted by anton in : Training , add a comment288. The number of days it’s been since I swam last. September 12 of last year.
You know, I don’t HATE swimming it just hasn’t been my thing. Got focused on last years JFK 50 miler, got sick
had an emergency colonoscopy. (Yikes!) Ran the JFK three days later, sprained my ankle at mile 6 and ran (sort of ) the last
44 miles on it…and on and on…Like I tell folks, as I’ve gotten older the time just seems to slip away…I go to sleep on a Tuesday and when I wake up it’s two weeks later.
Not getting in the water was like that. One thing led to another and the next thing you know, it was now.
Had the wonderful chance to go to my brother-in-law and sister’s river (pronounced “rivah”) place in Virginia. Needed to get out of town and see some family with ML, which is always fun… It was great to have the invite, but there’s a problem with the place from my current swimming perspective…all that water.
It just laps there looking at you…and it purrs to you…”Hey baby…climb in.” One moment the river tries to schmooze you in and the next it roils and caps and flows and defies you to get in it. “You couldn’t swim in me if you had fins and gills!”
So I did. From one pylon to another, about 100 meter out and back, out and back…nothing working, nothing flowing, movements aren’t smooth…everything akimbo. Breathing isn’t right, arms aren’t right, nothing is right and by 800 meters I’m shot. Better to get out of the salty water than hammer away with bad technique.
It wasn’t too bad! Makes me think about getting back to the pool. An aquatic jump start with the “Rivah” for a battery.
Long Bike, long thoughts. June 15, 2008
Posted by anton in : Observations , 1 comment so farIt’s Fathers Day and I miss him horribly. Was out for a 4 hour bike ride today…spinning around the park getting in some miles and thinking about Dad. Not the whole time but, he kept drifting in and out of my thoughts. There is just to much to remember…and as I get older I know I’ve forgotten some things but I try and recall what I do remember from time to time. To forget even one little bit is a disservice to him.
He was a product of his generation and the depression and of course the War. I would have liked to have know him before he went to fight in the snow and cold. I wonder if we would have liked each other. He was hard at times. How could he not be. No one comes back from experiences like he had and is the same person…He moved on and maybe had to re-invent himself or maybe he was re-invented even though he didn’t want to be.
“Tell me I’m a good man, tell me I lived a good life.” the old Private Ryan says to his wife at the end of the movie.
Dad was. He did.