Friday: Swim and Church Casseroles

This morning Ivan and I were at swim reasonably on time only to find the absence of our regular swim coach.  Now, I cannot help but realize that we have beaten our regular swim coaches (Dennis and Steven) down.  They have given up on trying to make us work hard.  They know that we will come to swim practice and refuse to do any fast intervals and probably kick a lot with our kick-boards so that we can talk about books and kids and such.  I can understand that we would be frustrating to our swim coaches and they would for sure give up.  

Today, however, Gretchen was our swim coach and Gretchen REFUSES to be beaten down.  If we try to shirk doing something, Gretchen refuses us.  She rarely lets us kick, and it is just her way.  Gretchen does not coach us very often, however.  If she did,  she might also get beaten down by our insistence on kicking and our refusal to do hard intervals or even attempt the butterfly or any sort of kicking without fins.  

Anyway, today Gretchen made us take off our fins and kick 20 x 25 with the kick board.  It was excruciating and my inner thighs were aching.  We also did 5 x 200 at a 1:20 pace, which I wasn't even making at the end.  It was a hard workout, and I need to do more hard swim workouts. I don't know if I should talk to Steven and just tell him to yell at us when we refuse to do something or tell us that we have to do it or what.  I think it would be hard to coach adults, as you can make kids follow orders but adulthood is a little more slack on the authority front.  SO, I guess it really comes  back to me needing to have the self discipline to follow a workout and not deviate from the workout based on personal laziness and my preference for kicking.

We got in about 3300 meters, and it was pretty great. 

At home, I spent my afternoon making three casseroles for the church freezer, so that they can take them to shut-ins and people who have had illnesses in their family.  I made a wild rice and chicken casserole, and when I finished it, I felt that the badness in these casseroles was more than any human system could tolerate.  I just do not feel that you can put mayonnaise, cream of celery soup, cheddar cheese together in any combination and think that things are going to turn out well for you.  

Albeit, I tasted one of the casseroles, and it was delicious in that scary way that means you might sit down and eat the whole thing without knowing what happened.  It was creamy and ambiguous when you tasted it, like you could not tell why exactly it was creamy.  Was it heavy cream, whipping cream, mayo, some strange cheese, or milk or what?  It tasted like the kind of thing that might be delicious after a long illness and your final arrival at home.  

Run and Gilad tomorrow!!