Snow Day

Ah, the joy of the snow day. One of the perks of working for a school system is the occasional surprise school closing. This morning, I got up at my normal 4:45 AM for my early morning swim practice with ProK Racing. There was no snow in sight and everything was open at this point. I drove to the Y and walked in at the same time as my coach. We even got to chat a bit before practice about some of my race goals and my training progress. More on that later.

When I pulled myself out of the water at 6:30AM after an hour of nubby arm kicking (kicking with arms down at your sides and rotating the body left and right as you slowly make your way down the lane), sighting drills (swimming with your eyes closed and only opening them when you lift your head out of the water), swimming with fists, and other various drills, a teammate who was getting ready for the 6:30 class said that the school systems had all decided to go two hours late because it was snowing. I simply smiled and nodded my approval.

I was delighted to hear the news because that meant I would have about 2 and a half hours to myself before I would have to leave for work. I could relax, make a good breakfast and lunch, drink some hot water with lemon and read the news, etc.

When I got home from class, I was home for about 15 minutes when the phone rang. I recognized the number as Henrico County Public Schools. Alas, they had changed their mind and decided to call off school all together. Now, I am not going to complain about a free day off but it seemed odd since there was no snow on the roads at all. Even as I write this at 1:00PM, the snow is still falling but has yet to accumulate on the roads and has only just now started accumulating on the parked cars. In fact, I can still see the grass in my front yard.

So far, I have accomplished a few things on this free day off. I put in some time on our bathroom renovation, took a nap, and had lunch with Melissa which is something we rarely get to do. And now, I have the rest of the day to work on some other projects. My plans include writing my blog, cleaning the house, working the foam roller and doing some other PT exercises. If I get the gumption, I may even continue working on the bathroom renovation. Mostly, I am just going to dilly dally my way through the day. It is nice to have the extra day. Instead of rapidly refocusing in front of a few computers at work, I will just do what I want to do and get some extra relaxation. Like I said, the joys of a snow day.

And now a quick training update. Last week at track practice, I improved my 1 mile time by 2 seconds. I felt pretty good about that and after talking with my coach this morning, she believes that I can PR at Monument and make the Kinetic Half Triathlon my A race. She has faith in me which is reassuring. Since, I have not nailed all my pace runs, I am not sure about hitting the 40 minute 10K mark that I discussed earlier. Right now, I am going to continue to work hard and shoot for beating my last year's time at the very least. As we get closer to the race, I will have a better idea if 40 minutes is really doable.

Well, I got another item on my mental checklist completed. Now I have to work on some PT. I will never reach my race goals if I don't continue to work on my knees. With the extra time today, I should be able to make some good healing progress. That is all for now. Thanks for reading.