There's Lizard in the House

I came across this lizard in the house while vacuuming. The dog wasn't interested in him. He hung around for a couple days before I found him sitting beside the door. I opened it up and he scurried away.

I went swimming and I got me some medals

I started off the 2009 SPMA LCM Regionals meet with a second place in the women's 25-29 age group. Results can be found here and video can be seen here. I was in heat 11 lane 4 wearing a bright orange cap. I've been doing too much open water distance swimming as I defiantly took awhile to get moving. I held back way too much from the get go. Ah well, I just need to get experience again.

I won my age group in the 100 breast and 100 free as well. My stroke stayed consistent throughout the race in the breaststroke, however due to lack of actually training the stroke my speed was pretty off. I will have to try again after I start trying to work more breaststroke into my workouts. My gauge though is always the 100 free. I will never forget how to swim that race. I stayed strong over the entire 100 and wasn't much off the time I did two years ago. I will greatly improve when the shoulder gets more recovered for sure.

Cal Luthern Pool for LCM Regionals

2007 SPMA LCM Regionals was the last meet I swam in before my recent shoulder problem flared up. I entered the 2009 meet because I figured it was time to try it again with the new shoulder repair. I switched up the events and left off the 200 IM in favor of the 400 free. I started entering IM as a masters swimmer since I never really did it much at all growing up. I figured I had a lot of room for improvement. However, right now my butterfly isn't there so I chose a 400 free to get warmed up. It is also an event in which I have had very little experience.

Police Interceptor Astro Van

I was behind this Police Interceptor Astro Van at a traffic light. I really liked the spoiler.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza Head

A friend of mine from Chicago recently informed me that he had a couple hats to send my way. He simply stated that he had somehow come into a large supply of hats that were like the Chicago version of the Wisconsin Cheese Head. Now I pictured a hot dog hat, due the popularity of wieners in Chicago. However, when I finally got the hats in the mail I opened the box to find two slices of pizza. They are in fact Chicago deep dish pizza hats. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. The dog though, found them extremely disturbing.

Balboa-Newport Pier 2 Pier Swim

On Saturday June 11th I showed up in Newport Beach to swim the 2 mile Balboa-Newport Pier 2 Pier swim for the third time. Back in 2006, it was the first ocean race I ever entered thanks to the prodding of my South Bay Swim Team teammates. I missed the 2008 event with a bum shoulder, so it was a test to see what kind of conditions my newly repaired shoulder could withstand. It survived half mile swims a few weeks ago. Since then it got even better conditioned and my stroke became more stretched out. I wanted to see if I could maintain it throughout the 2 miles.

The water temperature was comfortable for a swim. The waves were small, but getting larger every minute before the start. My main frustration with large open water swims has been getting out on the start. Unfortunately this race was probably my worst start experience yet. As the crowd ran towards the water someone got swept up by an incoming wave and went crashing into me knocking me over. I then got carried backwards by the wave while swarms of swimmers passed me by. I was stuck in a pile of people until well past the first buoy before I could start to break away.

I kept a smooth steady pace for the race. Just as the end pier was in good sight I started feeling a pinch in the left shoulder. I maintained the pace I was at to get through to the end, but I had hoped to be able to put down a final surge. I had enough energy to pick up the pace, but the shoulder couldn't do it. It won't be too much longer before the strength is there, some more training and it will get there.