Starting a new year
Greg and I spent New Year’s at Andrew and Lacey’s where we had a much more toned down event than last year. Thank goodness. With all the traveling and east coast time standards I didn’t need to be up partying all night. Still, it was fun and pretty much exactly what I wanted to do – hang out with friends to welcome in the New Year.
Starting on the first, the team went straight into another series of double practices. It’s been pretty hard but I think that I have been improving and getting back on track from all the injury upheaval of last month. However, today there was some extra excitement courtesy of the big storm and the murder mystery party.
This morning, at practice, the team endured sideways pounding rain and wind gusts that reached up to 65 miles per hour. At least we were in the water. This was one of those days where we knew that the coaches were at least as miserable as we were. The flags broke four times and we finally just ended up swimming without them. In the one pool that had been covered overnight the pool covers piled up in a huge tangle on one half of the pool.
Luckily, all the tarp and lane line reels were tied down at the Stanford pool. At the pool that Dana (my sister) coaches at, the tarp reels went in the deep end … with tarps on them. I have no idea how they are going to get them out. Also, the pace clocks there got picked up by the wind and flew away, but not before smashing into and breaking the windows of the pool office.
Getting to practice in the afternoon was also a challenge. Dana and I drove together since I didn’t really feel like biking in the terrible weather. Unfortunately, most of the roads that we use to get across the train tracks to the pool were closed due to flooding or were clogged with traffic so it took us forever.
Still, we weren’t going to let crappy weather keep us from our Murder Mystery Party. It has become somewhat of an annual event that the coaches and the weight trainer get sucked into as well. In case you can’t tell from the photo, it was circus themed. I was a trapeze artist. My outfit consisted of a Speedo suit over tights. I couldn’t find any regular tights so they ended up being fishnet. Oh well. And then I had to add heels just because. Classy.