Good, healthy marital competition

There hasn't been much excitement around here lately. The holidays are over. All of our family are back home and our house is quiet. I think Kai is missing all the attention and company. Its also been pretty cold. Kai is still up for heading out but he isn't enjoying his sledding quite as much now that it has dipped into double digit negatives. He is a Hawaii baby after all! We've been visiting some museums and exploring local children's indoor play spaces when we can to keep him from going stir crazy. 

The temps have been hovering around my running limit and I got really cold toes the other day when I headed out. But it took Greg to take the literal plunge and get us back into the pool. He got up at 5 am 3 times this week to swim at the MIT practice pool before his morning class. Consider that he has a 1 mile walk to the bus stop where he waits for the bus in the cold, rides the ol' loser cruiser to the subway station and then takes the "T" into Cambridge where he then walks again to the swimming pool. Interesting thing about swimming is that it is the only endurance sport where Greg and I are on an even playing field. We are both pretty bad at it. When we run or bike its pretty clear who has to work to keep up, but with swimming it can be anyone's day. So, seeing as a little competition is good for a marriage, I decided to make a splash too. Yesterday I tried out the pool at the sports club I joined a few months ago. I can't claim hardship in getting there; I just drove the Honda about 5 minutes down the road, wearing my oh so cozy brand new LL Bean down coat and matching mittens. 

The experience was what I was expecting. I felt fabulous, gliding through the water for about 50 yards, and then my arms started to give warning that they were going to fall off. I took lots of breaks, used a pull-buoy and my fins but managed to get through a 1500 yard swim (Greg only did 1200...). I thought about Hawaii the entire time. I thought about how spoiled I was to have been able to swim in the great outdoors for 4 years. Seriously, this is the first indoor pool swim I have done since 2004! I also thought about how boring indoor pool swimming is, well pool swimming in general. But at least in Hawaii I knew I was working on my tan. And if I was at the Kailua master's swim practice, I didn't have time to think, let alone breathe, and I had to work on being faster than Greg and my other fellow slow lane swimmers :-).

So what else was I thinking of while I stared at the black line? I thought about my good friend Kelley in Hawaii and wished I had stuck with it when she tried to teach me flip turns. Now, I'm afraid I'll never learn and that would give me an edge on Greg seeing as he definitely has me on reach. I also thought about ocean swimming and fondly remembered swimming to Flat Island with Kelley and Jo shortly before we moved away. We swam out on a beautiful day and then sat on the island and looked back at Kailua and the gorgeous Ko'olau mountain range and just hung out. Ocean swimming is NEVER boring. There is so much to look at and there is always that fear in the back of your mind that some other very strong swimmer of the sharp tooth type is watching you. 

Hopefully Greg and I can milk this competition thing to keep us motivated to swim throughout the winter. And if he gets too fast, I can always take him for a cross country ski!