How I spent my summer vacation Pt. 1

I did not jump in the lake yesterday. More logistics than fear. Two weekends from now, I'll have to do it twice, is all. See, you need someplace for your other stuff when you go for a lake swim. At minimum, you're carrying your house keys with you. And it wouldn't do for that stuff to disappear. I know. I've lost house keys before, and the buddy I stay with when I do something stupid like that (Hi, Dale) has moved to Vancouver. They do have lockers on Toronto Island, so I suppose I could have done it there.

Whatever. I wasn't all together at 11 this morning, so the easiest thing to do was a brick workout -- an hour-plus bike ride followed by a 10-minute run. I'm happy with how it went. The calf sleeves definitely make a difference, and it was the first time I'd run with the knee strap on. Getting a better idea, too, of what I need and don't need for each section of the race. (If it's particularly hot, I need the right cycling glove during the run because it has a sweat pad, for example. I have a water bottle in the left hand. Amazing the little things that occur to you.)

I got a couple days in on my week off where I got to work on more than one discipline -- cycling and swimming, cycling and running -- and also managed to squeeze some weight work in. I didn't manage to spring the surprises on my body I wanted to. One was the lake swim; my body already knows that's coming, so I can talk about that. The other is something a friend suggested to me that I'd planned on earlier in the week, but the knee issue kept me from trying. Week after next is a recovery week, so if I'm going to do it, it'll be in three or four weeks' time. It may have to wait till after the race.

I'd like to have accomplished more this week, but it's hard to know how much work you can put in until you've put it in. One thing I would like to have done is a mock triathlon: Swim, bike and run as far as necessary in one day. I got two-thirds of the way there today, and was considering going up to the Y for a swim, when I saw on TV that Yonge and Grosvenor was Ground Zero for the Pride Parade. Even if I could have got to the Y, that's just too much humanity to deal with.

I did gain a new appreciation for how wonderful it is to live by the lake. I rode out on the Leslie Spit to the end and got a view of the skyline with the islands in between. I wandered along Harbourfront. Tonight, after visiting my bike locker -- I've become attached to my bike in an unseemly way since I had the handlebar work done -- I walked down to Queens Quay to have a look at the water. I think that's how I'll close my evenings for the summer, rather than watching TV (I haven't turned mine on in more than a week anyway; any TV I watched, I watched at the pub, mostly World Cup fixtures) -- visit my bike locker, then go down to the water.

Back to work tomorrow, which means back to peanut butter and English muffins in the morning. I haven't had them in nine days. Lost a pound.