Expectations

Last night, as is my habit, I checked the weather forecast for today. I have an app on my phone that predicts hour by hour and it's usually pretty close to being right. Helps because our weather can be quite variable though the day so it can sometimes help me avoid riding in the rain or whatever. Anyway, it said for today all day thunderstorms and heavy rain... but chances of that increasing throughout the day. UGH! My fear was that the pool would be closed but of course I really wanted to swim. I mean, I wouldn't swim in a legit lightning storm but if there was just a thunder strike off in the distance I'd go ahead and risk it*.

I texted Nalani and asked if she would be game to go ocean swim since there was a chance the pool would be closed b/c of thunder (with the thinking that no one would kick us out of the ocean!). She said no but predicted that I could probably get Mark to go... So I texted Mark and he was like Yep what time? We agreed on 6:45 and I was stoked b/c while the forecast did say chance of thunder, it also said wind speed at ZERO. I had all these visions in my head of perfectly calm ocean conditions that frankly make me salivate and I was pretty stoked.

Woke up to no rain and only partly cloudy- no sign of thunder. So with expectations of super flat calm perfect water, I drove to the ocean this morning. I felt some wind on my face as I was walking toward the shore and then saw the texture of the water and was like, um, that's not the flat water I was expecting! It was typical tradewind conditions out there which really is no big deal but since my expectations were that it was going to be perfect I was slightly annoyed. We swam uphill against a strong current out to our normal buoy and it was hard, but when we got there I asked Mark if he wanted to swim another 1/2 mile out anyway to make the swim longer. Whatever you want was his reply. Gotta love a training partner like that! So we ended up getting close to 3 miles in this morning. 42min out and 32min back so that was a legit current! I got my first man-o-war sting of the year today as well which was sort of a bummer but it wasn't a really bad one. I might have an immunity at this point after years of repeatedly being stung... Not sure if that's how it works but today it only hurt for a few minutes and didn't even leave a welt. #nbd Anyway, chop, current, man-o-war... So much for my vision of a glorious sunrise ocean swim!! Lol. Whatever. We got it done and next time I need to mentally prep for the worst instead of envisioning things all being perfect. What's that saying about  Expectations??

The forecast ended up being wrong for the bulk of the day. We never got any thunder. Since it was mostly dry out there I did head out for a cruisy 90min ride. Felt a lot better than I expected (no heavy legs like normally I would have after a brick like yesterday) but I kept the effort easy anyway. It did start dumping- like flash flood style rain- right before Moana was supposed to go to her own swim practice. I asked her if she wanted to skip swimming since it was piss pouring rain... "No!" She wanted to go. Fair enough! I took her and she had fun swimming in the rain. :) Apple don't fall far from trees.

*Please don't comment to tell me I'm a moron. I assess situations and make judgment calls based on my perceived risk.