(Max) Back in (Pink and) Black

Today was a good day and the official kickoff to fall base training. It could have gone south...starting with not being able to find my whole wheat english muffins for my breakfast eggwich...but I absconded with one of John's croissants as a stand in - sinful but delicious. I got to work early to meet up with a few coworkers who are interested in doing tris...in some cases their first, others have done just one, and a third was one of two coworkers that were in my first wave of victims for our tri club and did their first race under my quasi-coaching this past summer. Work has been relatively sane this week, so I did something unheard of.

I left the office for lunch. But not just any lunch.

This has happened probably all of 4 times in the past year, but today's crisp(er) air (by Atlanta standards), the flawless and outrageously blue sky, and my desire to sling the race cooties out of my arms added up to the decision. I headed out to the Lifetime pool at 12:11 with a goal of getting up, getting in 600, and getting back in an hour. In the locker room, I had a landmark moment. Since I started training again, I had yet to swim in an honest-to-gawd swimsuit. I was wearing tri shorts and a top and fine with that, but had purchased months ago a lovely Tyr Maxback (my favorite training suit) in reversible jet black and hot pink.

Today, I put it on. Grabbed my race swim cap and acoutrements. And walked out on to the outside pool deck, reborn.

I did an easy 600 split evenly between regular swim/pull buoy/regular swim, with some focus on left-side (my off side) breathing, and called it a day. After a stop at the gym's cafe for a sandwich (financial splurge), I realized that was my mistake; I had to wait 3 minutes in line and almost 10 for the sandwich. So the whole ordeal was a 1:20 endeavor, much longer than I wanted, but enjoyable nonetheless. Since most my swims will be much longer moving forward, this was a nice treat to enjoy a fall day, recover from the race, and mark a new chapter into base training.

I kept the celebration going well into the early evening - after returning to the apartment from work and letting the girls out, I grabbed Tilley, placated Laika with a Chicken Stick, and we headed out for a 3 mile run at dusk to greet the night along the river amidst the earliest of fall leaves that just can't hang on for the fall color change to drop. I felt really(oddly) strong - what I had assumed would be a perfunctory return to the run ended up being a smilefest all the way to the turnaround and back...despite the plethora of ingested mosquitoes and spiderwebs.

Welcome, base training.