Day 4 of the house re-arrangethon

Made it, we have officially reached the end of the house re-arrangethon. Not that we have actually finished re-arranging the house, but more that we have reached the end of the weekend, we have plenty more stuff to move before the house looks anything like it is supposed to. Still, we reached a pretty good point today with our kids in their new rooms and a whole bunch of junk cleaned up. We may be a long way from finished, but it feels like we have taken a massive step forward. Yay us.

Of course the day hasn't been entirely spent moving furniture and throwing out old junk. Today also included a fun bit of coaching. For something a bit different today I headed down to Sorrento Beach to coach an open water swim session for Stadium Triathlon Club.

I have been thinking about this session since I was asked to run it about a week ago but it wasn't until this morning that I really landed on what we would be doing. I am a big believer in people getting out in open water in their wetsuits and getting a bit of a feel for what race day is going to feel like. I feel that getting that race specific practise is something that triathletes don't do enough, so when I was asked to run the swim session for the club today I thought it was a great opportunity to do so. The opportunity was even greater because there was about 20 people down at the beach today which meant that we had an awesome chance to simulate swimming in a pack.

When I do sessions like this I try and think what sessions I have found most useful over the years and include parts of that in the plan. That is pretty much what I did again today, trying to incorporate some elements of open water swimming that people may not practise that often.

If I am honest the session we did simply ripped off a number of open water sessions that I have done with various coaches over the years, but then again why re-invent the wheel. The session was broken down into a number of different sections, each working on an aspect of open water swimming. The first section we did was specifically aimed at on water entry and exit and sighting. We had another section where everybody split into small groups and we worked on drafting. The final bit we did was a handicapped swim starting slowest to fastest where the focus was on everybody negotiating the pack while keeping things efficient and polite. The session ended with a bit of a T1 simulation where everybody had to run up the grass and then get their wetsuits off in a rush. All things that are useful to people. Hopefully.

For me the day didn't actually include any exercise. After the flat out weekend of re-shuffling our entire house I found that I was pretty shattered today. Plus it was great to have the extra time at home to put the finishing touches on things. Exercise is obviously a priority for me and something I like to fit in everyday, but sometimes that just isn't possible. When those days come along it is best to not dwell on the lack of exercise but instead focus on the positives, like what you are achieving by not exercising. That was the case today. I will be back into things tomorrow morning, but for today, having a break was not the end of the world. Sometimes life has to come first.