Monday 7 February 2011

Teenagers, Pencil Cases & the Law of Unintended Consequences

It's amazing isn't it how your best laid plans can be absolutely kiboshed by such a simple event as a teenager forgetting to pick up her pencil case and nipping back home to collect it.

In the three minutes this seemingly innocent task took to fulfill, of course the school bus arrived and departed without the said teenager amongst it's passengers, thereby setting in train a series of events which meant that today kicked off as an unmitigated disaster. 

The unscheduled trip into Newcastle (during rush hour) took 80 productive minutes out of my day, not to mention the environmental damage and the increase in green house gases, as a result of the unnecessary car journey, and the stress and blood pressure reaching "clinically dead" levels (deja-vu?) as I realised the fate of my lunch time swim was now in the balance. 

What a great start to a Monday, fortunately by lunchtime things had improved somewhat and I managed to sneak away for and hour or so. Swimming up and down can be quite soothing and does give you a chance for some thinking time.

The pool was pretty quiet (5 head up breaststrokers with pretty good lane awareness and an aging backstroker hugging the wall) and I was going so nicely my initial plan to swim 3 x 400's extended to 5. I was repping on about 6:35's - 6.40's so for the first time this year there was a pretty generous rest, a long way away from the slow plod in the "Can I Outsmart an Excel Spreadsheet" post and I was wearing paddles for the first three in that set.

1000 Warm up swam as
3 x   33 free, 33 drill
        33 free, 33 back
        33 free, 33 drill
        33 free. 33 brst
        33 free, 33 drill
5 x 400 @ 7.30 pull breathing every 6 strokes
3 x 66 brst kick @ 10 s RI
200 swim down
3400 m

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