Week 2 Day1

The winds were strong overnight so much so that several cabanas collapsed, a window was broken in the dining hall and part of the "palm tree" roof at the Oceanside restaurant was blown right off. They get on things right away to fix them though.

At the pool, we were getting ready for a stretching session but Mother Nature had something different in mind...it poured buckets for several minutes, then stopped. Our coaches Doug and Nancy had a talk with us about things we need to be aware of, pool etiquette,what they expect of us, etc. Into the water we jumped and we began the first workout of week 2. I ended up in a lane with 4 fellows, Frank, Chuck, Keith and Nick. They made me lead! When we finished warmup, Coach Doug said you guys are swimming like salmon. Spread out and leave 10 seconds apart! We did manage to get ourselves sorted out. The workout was long and intense. Our main set was 12 x 200 free on 4:00, decending 1-3 with no more of a 10 second differential between the three in each set. This was the hardest set I have done in decades. The end of the workout was welcomed! Everyone then headed over for more breakfast.

We did a little bit of shopping at the beach today. There are pearl necklaces that are fairly inexpensive...they are not "perfect" but that doesn't bother me too much. The vendor now calls Hannes "amigo" since we have bought several items from him. He gave me some pearl earrings as a gift...I did buy some cool shell jewellery. Hannes bought himself a really nice Margarita Isle t-shirt.

Evening workout...somehow I ended up in a "faster than I like to swim" lane. My morning buddies with the exception of Chuck moved down one. I felt it was too intense for me, although I managed to pull off some really good for me repeat times on the main set of 9 x 100 free that was to be half of our 200 free time, plus 5 seconds. Another killer set. The best thing about hard sets is when they are over!!!

Evening ritual is pretty much the same as week 1. Go to room, shower, clean up and become human again, put on something nice and meet the group for cocktails in the lounge. Some of the gang was eating Italian in the a la carte restaurant.

This week there are 44 swimmers, almost double the number from last week. It is certainly a challenge to learn names and, more importantly, to get the right name with the right face. Once the bathing caps are off, it is even harder! Oh well, I still have several days to meet more people.