Event on the Calendar, Finally

    I have done it. Finally signed up for an event. This has been a weird year or so, with nothing on my calendar. It makes it hard to maintain a decent training ethic. I signed up the the Hagg Lake Open Water Swim later this month. There are three distances; 800m, 2000m, and 4000m. I am mostly interested in completing the 4000m so I can be qualified for the Portland Bridge Swim next year, but I am hoping I have enough juice to swim all three distances. I will freely admit, this scares me just a little, and that is good. One reason I tend to set my sights high is to give myself that titillation of fear, it gets my blood flowing. What this means is that I need to stay very focused with my swimming, even though I know that if I'm not ready now, there isn't a lot I can do in so short a time to make myself any better. But I can surely maintain my level of swim endurance, and focus a bit more heavily on my freestyle technique.
    One thing I have to remind myself of, is that when going for long distance I know I get to fall into my relaxed I-can-do-this-all-day pace. No, it isn't fast, but it is efficient. I have spent most of my training sessions over the last few months focusing on High Intensity Interval Training aka HIIT. This is usually some sado-masochistic series of sprints, 95% efforts, and slow recovery laps. It is the kind of workout that sometimes makes me feel like puking, but hasn't pushed me quite that far, yet. HIIT has the advantage of training for endurance by building strength through intensity, without having to spend 2 hours mindlessly swimming lap after lap after lap. Don't get me wrong, a nonstop 75 to 90 minute swim is fairly normal for me. But with HIIT I get to break it up into slightly more interesting sets that keep my brain from going totally numb. Besides, when my brain is tired after work it is hard for me to keep track of counting higher than about 4, and HIITs let me break down each swim into small, easy to count sets.
    I'm excited to finally have an event, and one I am not likely to injure myself doing. This will be my first Swim Only event, and that feels a bit weird. I am going to throw my bike in the car, for a lap or two around the lake after the swim, if I'm not totally gassed. Hagg Lake is very pretty, and the road around it is about 12 miles, an easy ride. I can pretend I am doing an Aquabike (swim/bike race).
    There are a few small events here and there that I would like to sign up for, a small obstacle course race, and a 5K race on the 4th of July. But my hip and knee have been so cranky that I will wait until the last minute to send in my entry fee. I may even resort to the slightly higher expense of registering the day of the race. Damn joints anyway.  For now though, I will bask in the knowledge that I have a race in 3 weeks.