Human ping pong balls

Ah, taper week...slept in today and it's looking like that could happen every day until race day on Sunday. Sweet! The weather today pretty much went to crap...showers off and on all day, cloudy, 60's, basically, the anti-summer. The only workout on the schedule today was a swim, but I just couldn't bring myself to go indoors, so I suggested a late-in-the-day lake swim for HH, Tatyana, and me. I'd driven across 520 a couple of times during the day and saw the choppy water, but figured what the hell, might be a fun challenge. I texted HH to tell her that it looked choppy, but adventure awaited and, being the consistently good sport that she is, she texted back, "I'm in!" Of course, Tatyana is the only person who's as good a sport as HH, so they were up for anything, as always.

The 3 of us met at Tatyana's condo and hopped off the dock into the cool waves. Pretty immediately, I felt like a ping pong ball in the bouncy water and had to laugh out loud at how ridiculous it was to try to swim with anything resembling a normal rhythm. But it was fun and we bobbed around making some forward progress over to the far side of Madison Beach. HH stopped for a while and when T and I circled back, she suggested a trip to the raft and the diving boards. Since the weather was lousy, the lifeguards must've been sent home early and the beach wasalmost abandoned except for the sign on the high dive ladder saying that the diving board was closed. We promptly ignored the sign and played on the diving boards, T and me following HH who did a perfect one-and-a-quarter (wetsuit protected) belly smack flip off the high dive to lead us off. Totally fun. After a few more flips (HH) and less-impressive dives and hops (T and me), we swam back to Tatyana's. By this time, I was, as usual, damn near hypothermic despite my insulated nerd cap (shoulda worn the neoprene socks, too, oops). T was a sweetheart and let us hop in her shower where I pushed her water heater to the limit while she made some tea.

My feet were numb and looked like cauliflower for a while there... I know there's a name for this condition (other than "I'm a pansy and always get cold"), so I googled, visited diagnose-me.com and self-diagnosed myself as having some form of Raynaud's syndrome, a disorder of circulation also called "wax finger," or, in this case, "wax toe." I must ask the nurse later if she can validate my diagnosis.

Lake swim/dive/bounce/laugh:

45ish minutes