Time Trialing It

Swim
1.2mi (2100yd)- 33:18
average pace- 1:35/100yd

Ride
time- 1:59
distance- 34mi

I had a whole workout planned for Monday morning's swim. I'll still get to it, probably Wednesday. But I ended up running behind and needed something a little quicker. Rather than cut it to pieces I decided to test-swim the HalfIron race distance, 1.2mi. 1.2mi is approximately 2100yd. 2100yd is 84 laps. That's a lot of laps to stay awake and focused during.
I didn't warm-up, I just got it and got cranking. Honestly, it wasn't so bad. Like I talked about Sunday, it's all about making short goals over a long distance. So I pretty much broke the swim up into 500s in my head and swam to the next multiple of 20. After a while the brain gets stretched and it starts thinking silly things like, "I'm at 65, that means I'm nearly to 80. Only 15 more laps!" But I was able to keep the pace cranked to a strong, maintainable rhythm and faded only a little. I don't have any way to know my splits, but if I had to guess I'd say the first 500 was the fastest and the last 500 was the second fastest, with the two in the middle having some dragging. My biggest goal was accomplished, the goal I preach all the time: My stroke at the end looked like my stroke at the beginning. You hold that, you're swimming strong.
My ride in to town last night wasn't too eventful. Got around most red lights, didn't get nearly run over but once, passed a huge group of guys on mopeds. I love the moped gangs that show up around the island. Big, smelly groups of tough guys on a herd of angry bees. I did the Lagoon Drive wind tunnel, which is a great place to ride. Fun tailwind for the nearly two miles out, strong headwind for the back, and the road is smooth and clear to whole time. Next time, when I leave a little earlier, I'll probably get two laps.
Three Non-Dirtbag News Items-
1) I ask everyone to pop over to the Swim, Bike, Mom blog and send her some power and love. She was nearly on top of her 70.3 New Orleans and she broke her foot yesterday. She handles this temporary set-back with much grace and good humor, which is not how I would be able to handle it, and very little "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckfuckedyfuckfuckingfuckerfuckfuckfuck!" which is exactly how I would handle it. So make sure you send some positive vibes her way. Injuries mess up even the strongest of us.
2) If you're on the Twitter, I suggest you follow @Mr_Triathlon. Dude is freaking hilarious. A recent tweet read, "I practiced my my 'flying squirrel' bike mount for 3 hours today. I'm fairly confident that should shave at least 2 seconds of my next IM." Correction- Follow him after you follow @DirtbagFitness. Like you aren't already following me. 
3) Diesel took off yesterday to the island of the long white cloud and short brown bird for IMNZ. He's there with many other triathletes from da island and the will be racing this weekend. So Dirtbag Fitness waves them goodbye and calls, "Bye boys, have fun storming the castle!"