This time I'm going to recover properly...

After the race my legs didn't feel too bad, today they were sore when I woke up and all day long. I love that feeling, it feels like you did something and once the soreness goes away your legs are going to be stronger. 

One thing I've never been good at is taking time to recover after a race. This time I've decided it's going to be different. I'm going to take it easy and do active recovery. Today at lunch time I went to the pool and did a recovery swim. I went super slow and didn't even have a watch on. I did freestyle, breast stroke, back stroke, kicking only and arm paddles only, I really mixed it up. 

It was one of the most enjoyable swims I've ever had. All I was focusing on was movement to get the lactic acid out of my body and letting the cool water reduce any inflammation. I was going so slow that I had old ladies wearing swim caps with flowers on them pass me. I just tried to have fun and even did some diving to the bottom of the pool.

As I was swimming I was watching the old people in their water aerobic class. There is about 14 women and 3 men. The funniest thing I saw was one of the old guys baggy bathing suit make him look like he was on Viagra. Here he was in the middle of all these women, looking like he was sporting wood. I wished I had an underwater camera, it was hilarious.

I was reflecting on yesterday's race and have determined that it is much more enjoyable to race a triathlon than to run to finish it. First off, to race it, you must train a lot. To finish, you train much less and just enough to give you the confidence you'll finish. When you race it you are in control and you are tackling the course, when you run to finish, the course is tackling you. 

The race was an out and back and I saw hundreds of people just starting their run as I was close to finishing mine and many looked dead tired. It looked like such a physical and mental struggle for them. I've been there before and it hurts. I'd much rather put in the mileage, race hard and enjoy it, as opposed to just running it to finish. Don't get me wrong, it is a major accomplishment to finish, it just hurts more than being in good enough shape to race it.

It turns out that the bike course was long. Instead of 55 km, it was just over 56 km. That makes sense because my odometer had my average at over 35 kph and the final race results only had me at 34.4 kph. I'm glad I found out about that because I was surprised and bummed that the results didn't have me over 35 kph. 

I also found out that the run from the water to the timing mat was exactly 1 minute, which means that I actually did the swim in 1:49 per 100 meters. I knew it was my best ever swim, I could feel it. I also find it interesting that I'm swimming faster this year with only 2 swim sessions a week versus 3 sessions a week last year. And I'm putting in less mileage during those sessions this year. 

Recovery Swim - 50:00 / 2000 meters.