A "Best swim EVER" kind of day.

There haven't been a lot of days lately where I get out of the water and feel like, "OMG! Best swim EVER!" Today, happily, was a best swim ever kind of day. The water was still hovering around 51F and the air was cooler than yesterday coming in at 54. There was something about the crispness of the air and sailboats on the water that made it perfect. Oh, yeah. There were sailboats everywhere. Nowhere near where we were swimming, but they were in the main channel just doing what sailboats do, tacking, turning, looking splendid. Something about the whole atmosphere today, since my vocabulary isn't stellar we'll just have to settle for... I don't know. Whatever word describes the feeling of a perfect moment, when anticipation lines up with reality and everything just feels right. Bliss is so blasé compared to today. So, if you have the perfect word, let me know.
Sailboats! 
The water just felt right. My body felt powerful and in control. My arms sliced through the water and pulled mightily, even my kick was strong- a solid 4 beat kick with purpose and drive. It's like my body had forgotten how to swim fast and efficiently in cold water but something about today made it remember and we flew. My average moving pace, according to Garmin was 1:35/100yards and it felt like it. Jeeze I can't get over how good I felt. To feel powerful and in control but completely detached and on for the ride, to just flow.
It wasn't just the swim. My favorite people where there too, swimmers and shore support. My mentor's wife is the best shore support in the whole wide world. She is amazing.  Her sense of humor and urgency are always appropriate to the situation. For instance, today I got stung by a hornet on my toe and instead of fussing over my lack of pants she looked at my foot because she knows how painful it is to have anything touch you when you're cold- much less get stung by some winged hell-beast.
The real DixieMerDog providing cuddles, I mean shore support. 
Just like yesterday, we warmed up on the beach swaddled in sleeping bags, wearing Yeti hats, nibbling homemade cookies, and drinking mugs of hot spiced Tang. If heaven is a place, it is today, on Yeti Beach in the sunshine surrounded by the best people a person could hope to meet.

Days like today are the reason I swim.






Okay, now back to the world of exams and papers.

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