The Last of 2010

There is something about wearing a wetsuit in public that just reeks of superhero...

I have slowly been getting back into the groove of exercising: a few spin classes here, a 6am ride there and a dash of open water swims. They have all been great- and most importantly knee-problem-free!

Most happily I have found an open water swimming buddy in Kai :) This has been the most happy new development. We've gone for a few swims at the SF Acquatic Park- last week we even logged a full 2 miles total- but this weekend we were able to convince Erica to get her ass out of bed on a rainy Sunday morning to come swimming with us! It was pretty awesome :)

The morning definitely started with a few texts that read:

"It's raining pretty hard. We still swimming?..."
"Its not raining here"
"Hum ok..."

I decided that it was in Erica's best interest to give Kai full authority when picking her up to use force if necessary to get here into the car :)

But we all made it to the Acquatic Park and even though it was deary it wasn't raining! Then it was the task of putting on the wetsuits. Erica had forgotten how to put hers on- luckily I was able to introduce her to the wonderful new world of pam pre-wetsuit.. it's as magical as you would imagine! I also had a new wetsuit that I was trying out so I was pretty excited to take this puppy for a joy ride.

Clearly Erica had forgotten how to put on her wetsuit!

The weather was easily in the 40's, misting and the water was also in the high 40's. So... we needed a bit of pre-swim hyping up before we got into the water.

Hence these:


and this...

Oh ya... and then we took a video:

Any who, after all of these shenanigans we actually did eventually hop into the water!

I must say for Erica first real open water swim in....a year? or more she did a great job and was up for everything that we asked of her. We didn't do a huge amount of meters, but we were able to work on our siting - which got increasingly harder as it started to rain more and Erica was even able to do a full 250m straight in her wetsuit multiple times- which is pretty great! She even listened when I kept shouting for her to put her head in the water!

All in all a great reintroduction for her to open water swimming- AND she even liked it enough that she is excited for more in 2011!

I have to say that I am pretty excited for 2011 too. Not just for the ability to do some more triathlons, but I really want to do some open water swim races. I sort of missed the boat on the whole open water swim season this year, but really want to explore more of it next year! Hell, maybe I'll even be around to do my bridge to bridge swim that I so want to do...that would be pretty awesome!

In prep for 2011 and swimming I went to return my rented wetsuit to Sports Basement and actually ended up impulse buying this awesome Orca wetsuit that I have soo been coveting! It's the Orca Alpha and I am super in love with it- so much so that I think it might be bordering on wrong. Can a girl love a wetsuit too much?...

And what is even better I got it for more than 50% off :) So it was like finding the love of your life AND realizing that they are a cheap date :)


I am super excited for my first open water swim in 2011 when I get to try it out for real! It has these great blue neoprene panels on the arms that make it much easier to swim in- so no more my-shoulders-are-so-tired-they-are-going-to-fall-off mid swim. They were on the Blue Seventy wetsuit I rented for the swim today but only on the shoulders and it made a pretty big difference.
The specs are below if anyone was to check it out:
http://www.orca.com/product/orca-alpha-female-

So all this will probably be the end for 2010, but there will hopefully been much much more to come in 2011. There will inevitably be more running in 2011- and with that comes more self-deprecating posts- and hopefully I'll be able to actually get in a long ride here and there.

Have a great holiday season all and see you in 2011!