run this amazing day

So I spent the week before this race in bed.  Once or perhaps twice I dragged myself to the gym, swam about two hundred yards and then said well that was a terrible idea and crawled back under the covers.  I rode my bike to make sure I could handle the deep wheels I had borrowed and I jogged with my running group but for the most part I tried to hunker down and let my body heal.  

Traveling was a reasonable amount of a pain in the ass, flights got screwed up and I ended up sitting in the back of my parents car alone with my bike box while the poet took a tour of the east coast instead of joining me on the flights he was actually booked to travel on (thanks, United).  We arrived in Mont Tremblant, I checked in by the skin of my teeth, built my bike, and then climbed into the soft squishy quiet hotel room bed and slept for over 13 hours.  
When I woke up Saturday morning I felt awful, the worst I had felt all week.  I hopped in the lake for about four minutes to check for lake zombies, di…

I did this race last year, a couple of weeks after ironman, and enjoyed a lovely tour of the reservoir on the feet of one of my swimming buddies.  I think I saw someone mention the race on Facebook a day or two before it and, well, I love swimming, that's really all that needs to be said, of course I was going to sign up.  My goal for this race, however, was not to mosey around and sing songs while the sun rose.  Rather, I wanted to race until I was shattered.  Secondarily to triathlon, this year I've been poking about a bit in the world of open water swim racing.  I learned quite early on that I had no idea what it meant to actually race in the water, so what I wanted from this one was to go hard, every moment. It was lovely, as it always is, to roll out of bed and into the car and arrive at the race all in a twenty-minute window.  I pulled out my most ridiculous swim cap because God forbid I ever do anything that could be accused of taking myself too seriously, plugged in my …