Keep on Swimming, Swimming Ms. Amy

Had a great long weekend. We actually ended up having a busy weekend but a fun one. I forgot to bring my camera to upload my pictures so I'll add those tomorrow but here is a recap of the long weekend.

Friday

hmmm, so long ago I can't remember what we did....OH, haa, haa. I got my hair cut and colored, YAY! and then I picked up my hubby at the airport :o) Doggies and I are very happy to have him home. It was late and neither one of us had eaten so we took a quick trip to Chevy's for dinner and then headed home.

Saturday

Slept in a little and then headed to Pt. Isabel with the doggies. They really needed to go out there, they had been missing it and good thing we took them cause it's suppose to start raining again today and through the whole week :o( Anyway, it was a bit chilly but turned out to be a really nice day for a doggie walk and doggie bath. Both doggies decided it'd be funny to go muddy puddle swimming. It was actually pretty darn funny. I think Daisy fell into the puddle and it stunned her cause she came runnina to me and wanted me to carry her, she didn't know what had happened. Patch on the other hand went right through the puddle on purpose. That darn doggie. After our walk we gave them a bathe and headed home with to very pooped out pooches.

Rocky and I showered up and got ready and headed out of the house. I didn't want to be cooped up inside, it was such a nice day. We went to Montclair and had lunch and then walked around a bit. We spent a bit of time at the Knitting Basket chatting with the owner which I'm glad we met. We were kind of turned off by the store the last few times we'd been in because her staff wasn't very friendly but she was really nice so Ithink I may go back there. Then we headed to Michael's for a few knitting/crochet supplies :o) Then it was off to pick up Rocky's mom from work. We had made plans to have dinner with them in the city.

We picked up Rocky's mom downtown Oakland and then headed off to SF to pick up Rocky's dad at the Ferry Building, he had taken BART in from Daly City. We had dinner reservations at 6:30 at he Crab House at Pier 39 :o) YUMMY, I heart Crab! It's always fun going to Pier 39 and pretending to be a tourist. We walked around for a bit and then went to dinner and then did some more walking around afterwards. It was a really nice evening. We drove Rocky's parents back to the Daly City BART to pick their car up and then headed home.

Sunday

We were suppose to have Lael and Anthea over for dinner but decided to head out to Palo Alto to watch the Amgen trials. They were going to be out there also so we figured we'd do dinner in Palo Alto aftewards.

Rocky headed out in the morning for a short bike ride, he's only got a few weeks til Solvang, so he wanted to get a ride in. I stayed home and did some stuff around the house and got ready for our day out. Rocky made it home, got showered and we headed out by 11am, made a quick drive thru stop for some food and then headed to Palo Alto. We got there fairly quick and found parking. I wasn't sure what to expect out there since the only other time I've seen Amgen is during one of their stages 2 years ago through Lafayette. It was over and done with in about 2 seconds. Riders came and riders went :o( This was timed trials though so it was a bit different. They had a booth festival set up kind of like you have out at triathlons, they had food booths, gear booths and a stage with music. It was actually pretty cool. We walked around for a bit and grabbed all the free goodies they had. I don't know why I do this, I always end up with a bag full of stuff I don't need and throw it all out. I did win a $20 off certificate so Rocky found a biking jacket he liked and used the coupon towards it. We walked around the festival and a bit and then headed over to find a good viewing spot almost towards the finish. We decided on a spot about 200m from the end so that we could get a good look at the guys coming through and get some pictures. It was a LONG day of waiting and standing but it was fun. Man, those guys are super fast. We saw George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer (i guess he's the new Lance) and a bunch of other guys that I hadn't heard of but I guess are pretty popular in the cycling world. Hubby knew who they were :o) We hung out with Lael and Anthea throughout the day and then aftewards we decided to head over to the Stanford shopping center for dinner at PF Chang's. We were all pretty whiped out. Spectating at these events can be tiring. You are standing all day long and just waiting and every few minutes one cyclist comes by. I think there must have been 80-100 cyclist out there, we walk around/stood for about 4 hours. After dinner we wont home and passed out.

George Hincapie

Levi Leipheimer

Monday
We thought about going out to Sausalito for Stage 1 of the Amgen Tour but decided against it since I had made an appointment for my bike to be fitted. I didn't want to cancel it and State 1 started in Sausalito so we wouldn't of made it back in time. We decided to sleep in and just relax. We had a nice breakfast and didn't really do much in the morning. Rocky again had a bad allergy attack so he wasn't feeling too great. We headed out around 12:30 for my appt in Berkeley which didn't take too long actually. The guy who did my bike fitting said it looked pretty good the way it was. He just moved my seat up a tiny bit and back a tiny bit but it made a big difference. He did make me pedal for about 20 minutes :o( I was pouring sweat, man I'm out of shape.

The rest of the day was spent resting, knitting, eating and watching tv. I was meeting Amy at 6:30 in San Ramon for a our first swim...eeeekkkk! I was a bit nervous since I haven't been in the pool in two years and I wasn't looking foward to being in the pool in the cold, the pool is heated but it's still super chilly out.

We did great though, 800 meters done in our first workout :o) WOOHOOO! GOOD JOB AMY!

Here is what we did:

50m - Swim
50m - Kick (you just hold on to kick board and kick)
50m - Pull (put a pull buoy between your legs and just use arms to swim)

That was our 150m warm up

then:
25m - Kick
25m - Drill #1 (face down, hands on side and only kick, take head out of water only to breath)
25m - Swim

25m - Kick
25m - Dril #2 (on your back, hands on side and only kick)
25m - Swim

25m - Kick
25m - Drill #3 (hands on side, face down and roll onto your back)
25m - Swim

25m - Kick
25m - Drill #4 (hands on side, face down, roll onto back but pause on your side before rolling over)
25m - Swim

we did this sequence twice for 600m

and then a 50m cool down = 800m

I'm feeling a little sore today but not too bad. I'm glad we got out there. I slept like a baby last night. We'll be swimming again on Thursday.