Great Day!

Today was a great day!  It started with a swim and ended with some fantastic cheeseburgers made from local grass fed uber natural COW..    as in singular cow...  not hundreds of them blended together.  Yum!  But I digress....


So from the beginning...  woke up at 7 and headed to the pool. I had taken a day off from the pool yesterday and I was hoping for a strong pool workout.  My first warmup lap was lackluster.  I felt tired after just 50 yards.  Not a good sign.  But I started in with my workout.  My plan was to do 18x50meter repeats with 30 seconds of rest between them max.  But I just wasn't feeling it.  Before long some of the 30 second gaps became one minute long gaps.  I felt tired and beatup.  It just wasn't going well.  My form was kind of crappy in the first few laps no matter how much I focused on it.  My legs were dragging and it wasn't pretty.  But I suffered through it.  After about 400 yards I wanted to give up and get out of the pool.  But I refused to let myself do it.  I was determined to swim at least 18 laps no matter how bad they were.  I'm really glad I toughed it out as towards the end my form started to improve.  I started to relax and the laps felt easier.  After 1000 yards I felt pretty good.  So I decided to try a 100 yard repeat.  I did the 100 yards and felt good.  So I said... I wonder if I can do 5 consecutive 100 yard repeats with 60 seconds of rest between them.  So I did that and it felt good!  And I felt relaxed and ok, instead of exhausted at the end.  So for my last group I did a 200 yard set.  I was psyched as I've never done a 200 in the pool before.  Maybe in open water, but not in the pool where the wall seems to make me want to stop.  So all in all I did 1600 yards today which is more than I've ever done in a pool session.  It took me close to an hour to do that, but I did it.  Sometimes I think I forget I only JUST switched to doing whole stroke from drill city.  I don't think I give myself enough credit for the progress I've made in the pool.  I'm always judging myself based on being able to swim a half mile nonstop, and not acknowledging the milestones along the way...    So yeah, today I'm really happy with my swimming progress.  Go me!

So then after a stop for coffee I went back to the house.  My friend Andrew and I decided to go kayaking.  So we loaded up the tandem kayak on the car and headed off to Griffen Bay.  We went kayking around the bay for a few hours.  It was nice!  It was really nice out today!  Enough to kayak around in just a pair of shorts which was nice.  My arms were killing me after the swim and kayking today though.  It was a nice paddle and we saw lots of harbor seals today which was fun.  Here's a shot of Andrew and I out on the kayak.

After kayaking we went back to the house and decided to clean up a bit and then head off to Lime Kiln Point to see if we could see some Orcas from shore.  If not we figured we would relax and read for a bit.  We had an AMAZING experience at the point.  We saw at least 30 or 40 different Orcas.  We timed it perfectly.  AND!!!!   A whole pod of them came within 100' of the shore!  It was amazing and I got some spectacular photos some of the best of which are below.  They were HUGE!  I was so excited when they got this close!  I've never seem them that close before.  I also managed to catch a few shots of them breaching (when they jump out of the water).  They were pretty far away but I still managed to grab the picture.  Which is not easy let me tell you!  But I was so excited to get such great shots...   here's a bunch of them below.

Sign at the walking path Entrance to Lime Kiln Point

Breaches!

Tug boat and large Male Orca

This is when they got really really close!

They looked amazing when they swam through the reflection from the sun

A seal trying really hard not to get eaten!

And as if the day could get any better...   Nick (Penelope's husband) made fresh burgers from the beef they get from a local farm.  So the burgers are grass fed with no antibiotics or hormones, and all of the meat comes from one cow and not hundreds of them.  They burgers were amazing!  So good!  That and a glass of wine was the perfect end to an absolutely incredible day.  I love this place.  The Orcas were really amazing today.  I felt so lucky to have been there when they were that close to shore.  Great great day!  Here's hoping tomorrow is half as good!  Tomorrow starts with a 13 mile run and Penelope and I are going to try and get an open water swim in on a local pond.  Not sure if we'll be able to though.  We'll see.