Mildly indiscreet rhapsodizing about Tuesday good things

And perhaps fortunately for both discretion and the non-enthusiasts amongst you, I then was at a two-and-a-half-hour work dinner which has only just delivered me home, which slightly took the edge off the blissfulness--but only slightly, since it was a heartwarming dinner of teaching awards (long citations in presentation to honorees, though!) that reminded me of all that is best about the university I teach at...

Itemized good things:

1. Still felt kind of sick this morning when I woke up, but then suddenly around noon very hungry and realizing the cold had run its course, bursting with relief and enthusiasm to be back at normal energy levels. BURSTING!

2. A very enjoyable (for me at least!) class this afternoon, which also caused me to reflect with gratitude that because of where I teach, I think I have not had a single class this whole school year where I did not afterwards feel delighted and pleased with my lovely students and the interestingness and usefulness of the kinds of thing we talk about together...

3. (OK, really I am going to abandon the list format now, because this is HUGE! HUGE AND BLISSFUL!)

My swimming problems are solved!

Well, not really, that is hyperbolic, but I went to the CU masters swim workout for the first time and it is absolutely lovely. It will suit me in every particular, as far as I can tell (oh, good opportunity to move back into list mode, let's be lavish and start a whole new one!):

1. It meets Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 6-7pm and Saturday from 4-5:30pm. Lovely to have a weekend organized swim workout, the one I've been going to is only Tuesday-Thursday-Friday 6-7am.

2. PM. PM!

3. Because sleep deprivation is the thing that reliably tips me over towards nervous breakdown, and really the fact of the matter is I cannot get up at 5:15 even two days a week let alone three without seriously messing myself up.

4. PM! Just thought I'd say that one more time.

(4a. My mom has a cute story about my brothers as small children poring over the ads in the newspaper for cheap electronics on sale, pondering an AM radio/alarm clock that was being sold for a modest amount of money and then concluding together that it would not be appropriate for their needs because they mostly liked to listen to the radio in the afternoon when they got home from school...)

5. And it is LOVELY. Lovely and welcoming. Two swim-team undergrads who coach, and a logistical organizer, all THREE of whom e-mailed back to me within several hours of me first inquiring by e-mail yesterday. And the people at the workout were so friendly and nice, I will not actually go into it because surely swimmers deserve a THIN and diaphanous veil of discretion over their manners and morals, but let me just observe that in the locker room afterwards it was amazingly SOMEONE ELSE OTHER THAN ME who had a smile bursting over her face and was saying "I JUST LOVE SWIMMING!" So we all had rhapsodic swimming-related enthusiasm, and the other two women personally and enthusiastically welcomed me to the workout--those of you who swim in friendly environments will not find this staggering, but I must sternly and happily observe the difference from my usual!

6. Pretty much all split lanes rather than circle swim, not crowded at all, and again WELCOMING, fellow I swam with actually invited me into the lane...

7. Super-nice coaching, super-nice workout! Which I did not have time to do all of, but I did do as follows (but it seems like a long time ago now, may be fuzzy on details):

800 warmup (300 free, 100 IM drill, 100 kick choice [dolphin and whip, with kickboard--quads have been ludicrously stiff since Sunday afternoon, fortunately the swim has quite cured it, that's good too!], 300 free with breathing 3-5-7)

Sort of inverse-pair ladder (there is probably a name for this I don't know, but I like it because it makes me think of DNA and double helices!), of which I did only the first half and cannot tell you exactly what the second would have been, but the numbers are deducible at any rate:

400 free (have now completely forgotten my time, but it struck me as not bad)
50 fly
350 as 7 x 50 IM "trans" (i.e. fly-back, back-breast etc.)
100 ? (really I just can't remember this now--something with breast and free, that would make sense?)
300 back-free-back
150 (officially something to do with IM drill-kick, but I just did 100 IM and 50 swim down as the hour was almost over)

And the coach was contemplating the question of intervals and I think I will be able to get some good advice on all this stuff, I was definitely being left to my devices in the good ways but attended to in the good ways also!

I AM IN SWIMMING-RELATED BLISS. I think I will go to JB's Thursday-morning early ones still until this session ends in March, since I really like that workout and I also like the flexibility of being able to switch off am-pm on days I have schedule conflicts--may be worth paying for both through the summer just to keep that flexibility (and the later spring-summer schedule is 6:30-7:45am which is rather more humane). BUT this is going to be great, all good, all good....

I did make an extraordinarily insane training schedule last night while feeling rather ill, it was my main consolation; I will post the first four weeks of it later in the week, but the rest of it I should hold onto for now until I actually see how I make out with this next round where I actually integrate cycling...

More anon!