Wake up at 5:15 am. Eat oatmeal. Check e-mail. I learn that Rachel’s word for swimming is Kailoa or something like that. I am convinced that is Hawaiian for tall woman with sassy mouth. My word for swimming Whatthehelloa as in what the hella is wrong with me after all this swmming and not going more than 3 seconds faster per 100. Ha ha ha. Don’t get me wrong. Repeat after Jennifer Harrison – I still love to swim. Back to this morning; Chris complains about making bed “please don’t make it anymore because every night I get into it.” I tell him bed making is character building. He does not agree. Drive 45 minutes north to Lake in the Hills. Meet Rachel Ross and Jen Harrison for 2 mile open water swim race. Rachel states “wow you really are small.” She asks where husband is – over there in his own cubbie, not talking to me. I tell her it was all about making a bed. Then we exchange barbs about coach Paul. We scoff at his idea of a warm up saying that we will do “10 strokes hard” and call it done. Get in water 10 minutes before start. Walk around. Rachel says not so nice things about swimming. I warm up while Shazam tries to talk everyone else into not swimming today. Or that’s my guess of what she did. Deep water start. The gun goes off. For someone so tall Rachel disappears like a small fish after about 30 seconds. Spent the next 2 miles swimming alone watching the main group about 1 minute ahead. I think some not so nice things about swimming. The first lap I go hard. I think to myself well this is a hard pace for 2 miles. But I go with it. The second lap I thank myself for not choosing to do Ironman this year. 2 miles is a long way to swim. My arms start to hurt. My stomach is full of air. I run into a buoy. That’s a new one. I literally find myself hugging an orange ball. I finish about 2 minutes behind Rachel and think to myself that is a good effort for the day. We both decide the course is long. Jennifer concurs but still finishes like 20 minutes ahead of us. Chris pouts by his cubbie. Rachel tells Chris she doesn’t like making her bed either. Jennifer does a 10K after the swim race. Overachiever. Rachel borrows a bike. She walks to the car not wearing shoes. She is so Hawaii that Illinois makes fun of her. I try to remove pedals from the bike unsuccessfully. Rachel takes the pedal wrench. Actually demands it. Rachel tries to remove pedals. She cuts her finger on chain ring and bleeds on my car. We talk about running. We both agree running in zone 3 is overrated. We wonder if coach Paul can hear us talking about zone 3. Rachel leaves for Cubs game. Jen tries to convince her kids to go have hot chocolate with Chris and Elizabeth. They make sand castles. We leave for bagels then Jen shows up with kids in tow. Spent the next hour entertained by two 6 year olds. Morgan has to go to the bathroom but not really. Graham goes to the bathroom and uses and entire roll of toilet paper (right Jen). Graham looks for treasures. He finds 4 pennies, a plastic crack pipe, a screw, a golf tee and hits jackpot with a jellybean. Then in true MacGuyver style he uses all of that to build a bird. He will be an engineer one day. Meanwhile Morgan steals his hot chocolate and tries to dunk mom’s teabag in peanut butter. After one hour I am convinced I need children in 20 years. Chris is still convinced he cannot wait that long. The day continues. We do chores around the house. Boss barks a lot. Time for a long run. Then dinner. Rachel calls. She forgot her helmet. I figure I should also pack an extra pair of shorts, jog bra, socks and diaper tomorrow in case she forgets that too. Because tomorrow we have a long ride. And a run. 45 minutes or 75 minutes – we can’t decide but do decide that since both have a “5” in them either would be ok with Paul. More tomorrow.
Saturday is Here
