Sunday, January 4, 2009

Home, Sweet Home

We drove home from Arizona on Friday. Nothing depresses me like leaving 70 degrees and sunshine to return to 30-50 degrees and rain.

*sigh*

Thankfully the weekend in San Jose has been sunny, though not remotely warm. I opted to swim indoors on Saturday. That ended up being an interesting choice...

I knew I might face a bit of the “New Years effect” at the gym.

What I did not expect was to find 25 people in a 4-lane pool, most of them using it as a hot tub.

Note: there is an actual hot tub 5 feet away.

Let’s just say there were some minor cultural differences at play here.

On the positive side, I got some great practice at open-water sighting as I checked my path and dodged around people standing mid-lane. Despite getting bumped out of lanes several times by incoming aqua aerobics classes, I managed to have a breakthrough swim. I watched this swim drill video before I headed out to swim and it made quite the difference in understanding high elbow catch. Now it will take lots of training to put it into practice!

On New Years Day I had my first outdoor bike ride in 2 months. We were still in Scottsdale, it was 72 degrees out and we had a lovely time exploring neighborhoods around Camelback Mountain. It felt SO good to be out there again, I knew I would make every effort to do my rides off the trainer when possible. Today I had a short bike ride scheduled and it was roughly 30 degrees out but I decided to go for it anyway. Jeff gave me a lot of bike clothes for Christmas and I put the layers to good use. It ended up being a fantastic ride and I was never cold!

Though it did take about 20 minutes to feel my toes again.


I end Week 2 back at training with my volume increasing but I'm feeling great and eager to tackle the next workout!


For December 29th to January 4th:
Swim: 4000 yards
Bike: 41.36 miles
Run: 8.93 miles
Strength: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Tomorrow I return to work.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO………

2008 was a very busy, successful, demanding work year. I am not heavily invested in continuing this pattern in 2009. I have some plans to change things this year but not right away, and in the meantime I am not looking forward to a return to the office and setting new performance goals. All things considered, it is some consolation that I know my boss feels the same way.

Happy New Year!

5 comments:

Eileen Swanson said...

Molly, hope you have a great start to 09 and have fun figuring stuff out on the job front! I'm sure whatever you decide, it will all work out! Let's chat soon ;-)

E

Duane said...

Happy New Year! Thanks for the video link!

Melissa said...

Hi Molly. I love the kitty photo :-)

Good luck at work on Monday, getting back after a nice long break is so hard. Sounds like you work a lot...I hope 2009 brings what you want on the job front.

Elayne said...

It was 7 degrees this morning when I pulled into work. Just be thankful you didn't come home to that.

Thanks for the heads up on the New Year's crowd. I always forget about that and get a shock when the locker room is packed. I'll change at home tonight before going to the pool. It usually dies down after 2-3 weeks so no worries.

Sherry said...

LOL! Yep... that's it!!! Amazing, right?!? It's like at least a free 10 seconds per 100! :o) I was so stoked about it last week... all I wanted to do was spread the love about the high elbow catch!