Fishing

Well I am in Darwin now and it has been a bit like coming home in some ways. The trip up has gone pretty smoothly and a few things have come together such that I think I will probably be able to get a decent week of training done up here.

Daryl has very generously let me borrow his bike for the week that I am here, which has made the whole process much easier. Although I the coach’s bike probably qualifies as one that you definitely do not want to crash. So I will be being extra careful out there.

I picked the bike up from Daryl’s place this afternoon after I had landed. I want to have his garage one day. It is a tribute to cycling, everything neat and tidy and in its place. Very cool.

Training for today was a run, which I managed to get done before jumping on the plane this morning, so that was one less thing to have to take care of once I got up here. It was the same run as I did on Thursday morning. On Thursday I was surprised at how good the session felt. It didn’t feel quite as good this morning, but I suspect the long ride last night had something to do with that. Still felt pretty okay though.

This afternoon I headed down for a swim at the Darwin waterfront. The Lagoon at the Darwin waterfront is one of only two areas of open water in Darwin that are safe to swim in all year round. It has a very nice 400m loop which is where I did a lot of open water swimming when I lived up here. It was great to get back down there, certainly bought back a lot of memories. One memory I didn’t need to get reminded of though was ‘The Fish’. The Lagoon contains quite a lot of fish, but it contains one fish in particular. This particular fish has been marauding swimmers for a couple of years now. It doesn’t really do much; it really just comes up and gives you a bump, usually along your leg. It doesn’t do it every time you swim either; sometimes you can for ages without an encounter, to the point where several times people have thought it might have died.  But then out of nowhere you will be swimming along and suddenly you get a whack. It usually scares the hell out of you. Anyway, as luck would have it, my one swim at the waterfront for about 6 months and I got a bump.

It scared the hell out of me.

On the bright side it did go away, which it doesn’t always do, so I was able to finish off my session.

Out onto the bike tomorrow morning. Like the swim at the waterfront, I think this might be a bit of a roll down memory lane. Just as long as I stay upright.