Municipal Bust

July 4th was an easy day training wise. I had a 3 mile run scheduled (completed) and a 2300 yard swim, which I missed – not by my own choosing. Fortunately, I was able to get in a very long swim on Sunday out at Coney Island, a 3.1+ mile swim from Grimaldo’s chair to the white house (end of Brighton Beach), then to the Coney Island Pier (to the right is a picture of it from the water) and back to the starting point. Otherwise, I would have felt that I was seriously neglecting my swimming.

It’s not as though I didn’t try to swim. I went to the Red Hook Municipal pool with my children and a friend with his children. We had a great time in the pool playing shark attack and just horsing around. Running through the water with 4 kids holding onto me was quite exhausting on my legs. I couldn’t talk my friend into watching the kids while I did some laps, so I figured maybe I could come back later while the kids were taking a bath at home.

After the pool, we went out for lunch and ice cream. It was a pleasant pain free way to spend a hot and humid 4th of July. I brought my kids home and headed back out to the pool. I arrived there at 3pm, just in time for me to be told that they are closing for a one hour intermission. This pretty much wiped out the only opportunity I’d have to swim for the day. We were having company over for a BBQ later and besides, we had a thunderstorm between 4 - 5pm which meant the pool would have been closed anyway. Why they need to close for an hour in the middle of the day is beyond me.

The kids yelled, screamed and ran around all evening until our company left. After that, we waited for it to get dark for our annual trip to our roof to watch the fireworks. This is always a bit of an event, because it means climbing through a narrow, dark, warm, dusty and creepy crawl space. From my roof you can catch just a corner of the Macy’s fireworks display.

I wasn’t too concerned about missing yesterday’s swim, because I knew this morning I would be able to get in a scheduled 5000 yard swim. I arrived at the pool for the 7am start of the first day of early morning lap swims. The lifeguards must have slept in though, because as of 7:40am, there was still no sign of them. I sat with several other frustrated swimmers as we gazed out onto the crystal clear 330' x 130’ foot pool. With no lifeguard in sight, we talked about the various events we were training for. Eventually, we all started to leave since it was getting too late in the morning to get in a swim. Fortunately, though they have evening lap swim this year, so hopefully I will get home in time to get it in.

Even though I went to the pool, I somehow feel guilty about not getting in the swim. I probably feel this way because I didn’t feel like going this morning and it was probably a relief not to have to do it. I think this stems from times when I went through the motions of doing something, but didn’t really prepare for what I was going to do. Specifically, I am thinking back to school days when I would go through the motions of going to class, sitting through them, but never really paying attention or studying. I always hated when I did that and going to the pool for the last two days and not swimming, gives me feelings of going through the motions. That’s so much how I feel this year in regards to swimming.

Hopefully, the lifeguards will get their act together and be available for tonight. I feel like I have vanquished the evil spirits concerning my biking; only now I am hoping they don’t keep me from getting in the water.