High School, Revisited

We traveled to Maine the day after Christmas to see my family. We planned to stay until Thursday night, and I had to get in a swim according to my PLAN from Caitlin that I refuse to disobey. (Yep, I'm a little rigid...) Problem. Where? 

My friend Alina swims with a Masters team up there, so I thought perhaps I could join them. They weren't practicing Christmas week, however. Instead, she had gotten special permission to work out with the high school swim team. Did I want to come? Oh boy. 

The coach of both the girls and boys swim teams in Cape Elizabeth is a former classmate of mine--a guy with whom I was actually pretty good friends. I walked into the pool site and immediately saw him. The whole thing was like a weird dream. Here I am walking in with my best friend from high school to the pool, where we spent so much time, and there is Ben, my buddy and fellow swimmer--only he's the coach--and Alina and I aren't in high school, but are 37, and we are supposed to get in the pool and practice just like the old days with all of these kids... Bizarre. The whole thing was bizarre. 

 It was also a bit of a nightmare (even though I had fun). One of the sets we did was 12 x 125 on 2 minutes. The odds were to be done as 100 IM with 25 free at the end, and the evens were straight free with a start off the block. Yikes. Anway, we get started on the set and I quickly fall behind and fail to make the interval. No big deal. I'm a 37 year old Mom practicing with high schoolers., right? What did I expect? I already have no shame... Except that every time we started off the blocks, the whole team had to wait for me to finish so they wouldn't dive on top of me. EMBARRASSING! 

I apologized profusely to Ben after practice about holding up his team, but he just laughed and said he knew the team was psyched about the added break. BTW, my friend Alina is a rock start swimmer (former state champion in a billion events) --and she kicks the asses of the high schoolers, so she was in no way holding back the team as I was... 

In other news, I am finally starting to make some progress on the bike. I am now going faster while still staying in zone 1. Of course, I still haven't cured the boredom problem. It's pretty deadly. I'm supposed to ride 2.5 hours tomorrow morning, and I have my bike set up next to a table complete with drinks, a gel, 1/2 a Clif Bar, 4 books, 3 magazines and the TV clicker. Wish me good luck. 

Unrelated to all of this is super exciting news for me in Mommyland. My youngest has decided that she is now potty-trained. She's determined. No more diapers. This was a huge, special, total GIFT. My other two resisted training and probably would still be shitting in diapers if I hadn't insisted for months and months that they act like big kids. Lara is only 2.5 years old, and she basically wants to be like her big bro and sis. Sweet! She's gone three days with only one mistake. Of course this mistake was that she took a dump in her underpants--not pretty--but still, things are looking promising. NO MORE DIAPERS. Hallelujah!