Bad Goggles

Sleeping in the heat ain't no fun, and I don't mean isn't. We have been having air conditioning problems at our house and the air man finally came out Tuesday, fixed our problem, and charged me what I thought was a very fair price. The house started cooling, and by the time I went to work it was 85 degrees indoors, a vast improvement. Wednesday I have my film class at night and when I got home the house was still 85 degrees. I went outside and looked at the unit. The outdoor fan had stopped so I shut the power off to the unit and we had another blissful night. NOT!!

At least I made it to the pool Wednesday afternoon. I had some brand new goggles that I was absolutley giddy to try out. They leaked. I adjusted them. They leaked. I adjusted some more. They leaked. I adjusted again. They leaked. I threw a fit and tore the goggles into as many pieces as I was strong enough to. Such has been my experience with goggles. Usually, with most things, you get what you pay for. With goggles, my experience has been the cheaper the better. The best ones I ever had were a cheap pair of US Divers from Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, they don't make that particular model anymore. Wal-Mart has another model of US Divers goggles on the shelve. Guess what? They don't work for me. They leak. No matter how much I fool with them, they just don't work.

Funny thing with goggles, they either function properly from the beginning or they never will. It ain't socket rience. For a marathon swimmer, in my opinion, there are only two considerations: 1) they don't leak, and 2) they must be comfortable. Goggle-fatigue has always been my number one danger in a long swim. Color me a sissy, but if my goggles are uncomfortable, I'm quiting. There is enough to deal with in terms of physical and mental fatigue. Anything extra is usually a price I'm not going to pay.

Pardon the digression. At the pool, I swam

300 fooling with goggles
pitched a fit and tore up the new goggles
2,700 straight with old goggles
15 X 100 pull with small paddles @ 2:00
Total: 4,500 meters.

For the week, I am now at 16,000 meters with a few days left. This is what it will take to beat Beets' butt.

Then it was home to get ready for work. I was expecting my new running shoes to be delivered by UPS. I kept stalling, hoping they would show up so I could put my running shorts on under my dress slacks, wear my new shoes, walk to work, and then run home. The shoes didn't make it until after I was in class. Normally, when I get home after a night class, the chances of me running are about one to ten, no matter what resolve I think I have before my teaching duties. I always enjoy it when I do run that time of night, but I always so tired then that it's very easy to sit down and stay there. With the brand new shoes waiting for me when I got home, however, I changed clothes and made it out the door. I ran a little over five miles in the dark before going home to stay hot the rest of the night.