In which contentment is rewarded

I was pleased with how last week ended. I didn't exercise on Christmas, so Saturday ended up being a significant exercise day, but in general my "do a serious workout each weekday" policy went reasonably well. The second swim of the week involved VERY choppy water, so I ended up 25 meters shy of my swim goal for the week, but I'm not too worked up about it.

Yesterday, I did a 10K run. Today was a work day, but things went off the rails early on. I got called in earlier than expected, which killed my stretches and strength training for the day. I noticed a bad wobble on the rear wheel of my bike; upon getting back home, I determined that it's not really safe to ride it unless necessary, so that killed any hope of going to my usual swim spot. But a couple weeks ago, I met a young man who said he sometimes went swimming in the river close to where I live. Why not?

I put on my wetsuit, tossed my gloves and booties and hood into my swim float/backpack, and walked there. I felt very trepidatious as I put on my booties. Walking into the sea, I looked back several times. The wind was strong, the shore was rocky, the waves were high; was I making a mistake? I planned to swim between two navigational buoys, going with the wind, and deciding when I got to the second whether or not to try to swim against the wind for a return trip. I started to turn back several times.

In the end, I swam between them. Only once; it turns out that they're almost exactly 200 meters apart. I kept clear of both of them, because both appeared quite rusty. I'm still not sure if what I did was foolhardy or not. I doubt that swimming in the other direction would have yielded meaningful results; the wind and waves were quite strong. But, if nothing else, it's good to know that there is a viable swimming option a short stroll away. Oh, and I jogged home at the end of it all.

At the end of the swim, I checked my distance. I told myself "I have no idea how far that was; heck, I'll be happy if it was 200 meters". Well, it was more like 450, between the trip between the two buoys and the trips from and to shore. I've also accepted that, while I could push myself and do my strength training this afternoon, it would be better just to let it go for the day. 6 times a week is pushing things enough; there's no call to do 2 within 16 hours or so of one another. I'll just accept the red splotch on my day, and tomorrow I'll aim to do better. And, hopefully, this week will include a long, long swim, on the order of 1.5 kilometers. 7 trips between those 2 buoys would do nicely, with the shore trips tossed in; with a swim of that length, I don't much mind how slow it is. I also need to get my bike fixed; I'll probably end up using my stationary bike to reach 100 km this week.