A bit of Luck

I had a bit of luck during my swim this morning. Actually I guess you could say there were two bits of luck involved. More specifically the Luckin twins from Fremantle Tri Club, recent recipients of Kona Slots at the Mandurah 70.3. As well as Mark and Lisa Luckin my swim also involved WA's favourite pro couple Guy Crawford and Kate Bevilaqua. Why was I lucky I hear you ask, other than having the chance to use a great pun in the title of this blog? Well having some of my fellow Fremantle Tri Club members turn up unexpectedly made what could have been a fairly boring open water swim into a pretty fun one. I call that a bit of luck.

As I mentioned yesterday the swim for today was a longish, open water, wetsuit swim. A last check before race day I guess you could say. I don't swim in open water as much as I probably should before a race (I didn't at all before Mandurah). But when I do I usually head down to a section of the river called Bicton Baths. Bicton Baths have a lot of history, but in their current incarnation they are a couple of jetties 50m apart. They look a bit like this:

Bicton Baths

They are great because they are pretty much an open water 50m pool, complete with swimming platforms and ladders at either end. It makes getting out for an open water swim nice and easy. An extra benefit is that I can walk there from my house, which counts for a lot in my book.

Anyway, even with the benefit of having an open water swimming pool, heading out for an hour of straight swimming was never going to be that much fun. However, about half way through, just by luck, the Luckin twins, Kate and Guy turned up with the intention of doing the same thing as me. Having a few more swimmers to play with meant that the rest of the session became much more fun, with some drafting practice, a bit of pace work and a few more interesting course variations beyond up and back. This meant that a session that I hadn't really been looking forward to ended up being  really great. Sometimes you never can tell how things are going to turn out.

The other activity for today was getting out for a spin on the bike. I actually did that first thing, before I headed down for a swim. Unlike yesterday morning, this morning the weather was pretty close to perfect, light winds, no rain, just what you would expect for this time of year. The good weather meant I could get out on the TT bike, so that was good. Quite a nice little spin. It is reassuring to go and knock off a shortish ride like that and feel absolutely fine afterwards. It gives me some confidence that I can get through the longer distances and still feel some form of okay at the end.

Walking down to and swimming at Bicton this morning made me realise just what a great spot I live in for triathlon training. I think I have mentioned before that I live on what is known as the 'River Loop' in Perth. That means I can step out my front door and ride right onto what is probably the most popular cycling route in Perth. As well as that I have an open water swimming pool two minutes walk from my house. And on top of all that, from my front door I can run, uninterrupted for about 19km before I have to turn around. It sort of hit me today, I couldn't have picked a better spot. Not bad considering we found the house several years before I ever even thought of doing a triathlon.

Sometimes things just work out.