Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Stroking the greatness

January 22, 2019
Hello again!  Why didn’t you warn me?! I told you I’ve been doing some burpees and you should have known that was a bad idea!  My wrists are now mildly sore.  You can laugh about overuse of the wrist all you want, and I hope you do and that it makes you feel better, but it doesn’t make me feel any better!  So now I will have to make other plans to improve my cardiovascular fitness.  One option is to keep my wrists locked and do the push-up part of the burpees on my fists. But on the other hand…. you’ve got a completely different set of fingers!  Ha!

Some are born to greatness, others work hard to achieve it, and still others stumble upon it temporarily and feel very lucky.  I feel like I’ve recently joined the 3rdvariety.  I am feeling the greatness because of the following serendipitous (and accidental) sequence of events:
1.    I signed Snot Jr. up for swimming lessons at ye olde YMCA.
2.    We went to the first lesson and found out that it is open swim right after the conclusion of his lesson!?
3.    I took my swimming trunks to the 2ndlesson and discovered that there was a lane available for lap swimming during Snot Jr.’s lesson!?
4.    I realized this was a good opportunity to work on some low-impact cardiovascular exercise instead of sitting around and ignoring the other parents!

It’s as if I’m managing my time well!  I used to swim regularly for a year or two while I was training for triathlons.  It was great and I became a fairly good, albeit greatly slow, swimmer.  One time I even swam for a mile without stopping!  How did I manage that, you may be wondering?  Well I had a little help from this guy – Terry Lauglin.  I bought Total Immersion and I heartily recommend it to anyone who is not a great swimmer, but would like to become a competent and efficient one.  Yes, instead of trying to make it across the pool as quickly as possible, I used to try to make it in as few strokes as possible. In the 8 years or so since I stopped swimming, I’ve naturally become much less efficient, but perhaps I’ll regain some of my technique while Snot Jr. treads water and enjoys the antics of his swimming instructor’s rubber squid associate named Bob.  

Although I haven’t been bicycling for almost a week now, I did have some excellent opportunities to enjoy some rides with relatively clear pavement interspersed with some puddles and slushy snow.  Winter bicycling can really open the senses to some of the wintery sensations available for the outsidey individuals.  For example, I hadn’t really taken note of the way the traffic lights can reflect off a wet tyre on a winter’s eve.  

And the fun of riding down a snow-covered hill on a bike is just as much fun as sledding.


So I hope you get out to experience the under-appreciated month of January and have a sensational winter!  

See you on the slopes!

-BSO

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