Public Holiday Day

As anyone in Australia will already know, today is a public holiday here, which means today has been a very nice relaxing day.

As I mentioned yesterday the plan this morning was to head down to Coogee Beach (we have one of those in Perth too) and go for a swim. I was meeting Johan Borg from Break Your Limits and a few others there, and Johan had mentioned they were planning on going running as well. That's cool I thought, I will take my shoes so I can do a quick run with them. 11km later the run was done...

Just a little bit further than I had been intending. It was a very nice run though, with some good company and on some nice paths, so I didn't really mind.

After all that we did manage to get out swimming as well. In fact we had a chance to try out Coogee Beach's new shark barrier. There is currently a lot of excitement in Perth about shark attacks, so one of the things that has been done to combat it was building this shark barrier at Coogee (I think it is a trial). It is basically a very big enclosed area that runs along the beach. I have been told it is 300m long, but then while we were swimming somebody with a Garmin measured it as around 375m. Doesn't really matter, somewhere in that ball park. Big enough that it makes for a decent open water lap anyway. Unfortunately today is the first day in about three weeks where we have had an onshore breeze blowing all day. This meant that the ocean was choppy and messy. It made the swim a bit  of a challenge. Still it is good to swim in those conditions now and then. As most of us know races aren't always done in flat water (ask anyone from the 2013 Melbourne Ironman). When those rough races happen it is nice to have the confidence of knowing that you can cope.

Going back to the shark enclosure for a second though. Whether or not you feel this whole issue is a storm in a tea cup, the enclosure itself is pretty cool. I am generally not that bothered by being in the ocean, but I will still balk at swimming along, 75m offshore, alone. The enclosure takes that anxiety away, really without you being aware of it doing so. I think it probably just taps into that part of the human brain that says, you are safe and so you can relax. It wasn't something that I was conscious of feeling, but it was more a case of realising that I felt pretty comfortable bobbing around in the ocean. Anyway, anything that makes swimming out in the ocean more accessible for people is okay by me.

I also had a bit of a spin on the bike this afternoon. I took advantage of the public holiday and today's cooler weather to do the ride at lunch time, which was a bit of a nice change. Very windy out on the bike, but the ride was still very nice.

On to a different topic, I have recently started using the interwebs for Twittering. Some of you may have noticed the Facebook link on the left of this page, and I thought if I was going to get involved in social media I might as well go the whole hog. I gather the interwebs also contains other things such as photos of cats and videos of people being hit the groin, but one thing at a time. If anyone is interested in finding me on Twitter I go by the name of @DerekCrossTri (original I know). On Twitter I talk about many interesting and deeply philosophical things, yesterday I was talking about cake.