Christmas Swimming

After JO and I opened stockings, drank coffee, made breakfast, opened presents, spent a couple hours on web cam with my family in Atlanta and put our 11.49 pound turkey in the oven, there was only one thing left to do.
We went swimming.
When we first started dating about 9 months ago, we swam at Aquatic Park in San Francisco every few weeks. But since I live farther away now, and since the oil spill and since the weather has gotten colder, we have been neglecting our little swimming park in the shadows of the Ghiradelli Square sign. And we have both missed it.
So we loaded up the gear in a new gear bag JO bought me for Christmas and headed to AP about 3:00 p.m. There was an inordinate number of tourists sauntering by en masse and staring as we disrobed and crammed ourselves into our wetsuits. The tourists were wearing scarves and hats and big, puffy jackets because it's aout 49 degrees outside -- which in Northern California is like polar ice cap cold. But not too cold for us, we thought.
The first step was deceiving.
"It's not that bad," I shouted to JO, to penetrate the earplugs and layer of silicon sheilding his head from the cold. But once we were in to our waists, I had changed my mind. My feet burned like touching dry ice. And my hands, too. But we were already there. JO took off for the buoy, without putting his face into the water, and I followed, trying to stir up some circulation to heat up my body. As the water seeped into my wetsuit, it took my breath away. So we bobbed for a few moments to try to catch our breath before heading for the orange flag that marks the end of the swimming course. Each lap at AP is a third of a mile, I think. So one lap takes less than 15 minutes to complete. John got brainfreeze within 30 seconds but he carried on. My face stung. But the pain all over my body did ease a bit as I scraped through the water.
One weird side effect: I swear I have never swum so fast.
Cold is like pure adrenaline. But we also clenched every muscle in our bodies against it as we swam. My jaw hurt for two days after I emerged from that half-hour swim. And my arms and back would be aching sore on Boxing Day.
We kept what I felt was a fast pace though I never did feel like I caught my breath, completing two laps in the last moments of daylight before heading to shore.
Looking like two latex-covered creatures making the evolutionary step from sea to land, we were greeted by a smiling man with an Eastern European accent who called us Superman and Superwoman. And we laughed at his sweetness but also because we felt like it a little bit. We would have really felt like superheroes except for a guy in a red swim cap and no wetsuit who we could barely make out, still swimming steady and stealing our superhero thunder as we dried off.
It took more than an hour for my core temperature to heat back up and I shook for awhile after deck changing into dry clothes and slipping on my Ug boots. But I also felt an amazing and almost misplaced refreshment. Our swim was invigorating.
When we looked at the San Francisco Bay buoy report post-swim, we found out the water had been 51.1 degrees, which is at least 15 degrees higher than a non-melting polar ice cap. I hope to make the Christmas swim a holiday tradition.

Maintenance Training

.. kind of like getting hit by an 18-wheeler.
That's what I felt like after a 9-mile tromp through the Tennessee Valley in the Marin Headlands on Saturday. Coach Neil kicked my ass, as well as talked me up the 1.5 mile uphill that started our run. Coach Neil ruled. I didn't even know I could actually run up a hill. Usually I see them and I am intimidated and I resign myself to walking. But when your coach is running next to you, you can't stop. I felt nervous but remarkably not terrible for about the first 3/4 of a mile. After that it was a little painful, and Coach Neil was talking most of the time trying to keep my mind off of the feat. At one point he said: "Do you hate me and do you want me to just stop talking?" (Please note that Coach Neil was not even the slightest bit winded as he said that.)
"No.... huff... Coach .... I ... huff... just... .huff.. don't... huff... want... huff ... you ... to ... huff... think ... i ... huff... can ... huff... contribute."
About 1.25 miles into the run, Coach asked what my RPE was. For those un-tri-dorks out there, that's "rate of perceived exertion." It's a scale of 1-10 where one is lying in bed reading a magazine and 10 is a pulmonary seizure.
"I'm... a ... huff... 10... coach."
"No you're not a ten," he says.
And that's why I love my coach. Because even thoguh I feel like I'm dying, he knows I'm not actually dying. And he knows how far to push me.
Did I know I could run 9 miles with 4,100 feet of vertical elevation?
No. I didn't.
And if you would have asked me Saturday morning, I would have said, "No freaking way can I run that far."
And then I did.