I love the taste of dirt in the evening, tastes like....injury

Hahahaha, yes it's me, your fearless triathlete in training. I never like open water swimming. Besides freaking myself out thinking about all of the creepy crawlies that might wind up inhabiting my nether regions once they get past my bathing suit, I hate the taste of the water. Tastes murky and dirty to me and ever since one of my girls asked why I didn't just put my face in the turtle tank water since it was probably just as clean as the James River, I never could get that imagery out of my head. I had no idea how much I didn't like the taste of dirt until I had a mouthful and was gargling with it lol!

Let's rewind, insert dream sequence wavy lines here, every Tuesday I meet up with a neat group of people to do the Tavern Triathlon course. Since having parts of me removed, and subsequently not training for 6 weeks, it has really taken it's toll on my aerobic capacity amongst other aspects of my fitness, I try to workout as often as I can. I have next to no core strength, but I keep telling myself it's because they cut into my stomach muscles in four different places, my cycling is way slower, it hurts to reach when I swim, it hurts to run and bounce my stomach around. Anyway, it's a great group, we all have fun, we're all different abilities and levels. Some people do all three, some do two of the disciplines and that is what Heather and I decided to do. We were just going to swim and run this week. I had some major things I needed to attend to at home so I couldn't spend forever working out. 1/2 hour swim followed by a 5k run. Heather has been struggling with her run she said, and my run isn't nearly as fast as it was for 10k training team so those two were the ones we settled on. After a good swim, we got into our sneakers and off we went through Robious Landing Park. I used to train there once upon a time with my running coach Brenda. I know the one of the trails pretty well and we were doing a 1+ mile loop. As we're clipping along my running buddy asks how fast we're running. I looked down at my Garmin as we were crossing a foot bridge on a slight downhill and I say we're running 9:00 minute---------------- whhhooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaa! All Superman like I go over a root. My knees are skinned, my shin is skinned and worst of all I felt a snap when I went down in my left ankle. Oh Shit! I hurt myself. I couldn't feel my left foot as I lay there on my back...spitting out dirt. I realized in that moment I liked lake water wayyyyy better then the actual dirt. So after checking on all of my parts, and making sure I wasn't too madly damaged, I brushed the dirt and my ego off and off we went to finish our run. There was nothing worse then laying there, trying to figure out if I was still all working parts and having the Cross Country runners running past, looking down and trying not to laugh. Hey, at least this old lady didn't break her hip right?

Sitting there afterwards, with Heather making me clean my wounds, and me hissing like a vampire seeing the dawn, I am wondering what's going to happen with my training. I just got back to where I felt like I was making progress. I felt like that swim was good, I was keeping the lead pack in sight and even hung on to the tail end of it for the first 15 minutes and I certainly wasn't last by any means, so there was that. Our run felt great, we were moving along nicely, no, not as fast as I used to be, but the 9's felt ok, and I wasn't totally out of breath. I was actually able to talk and was pleased with how I felt aerobically. I haven't been able to say that at all lately.

So here I am now, ankle elevated, bruised black, my legs looking like I shaved with a cheese grater, and hoping I can ride 62 miles this Saturday. Hoping I can swim tomorrow night and keep up again. Hoping I can run the 8 on Sunday with my Yellow Snow group.

Is the Cosmos trying to tell me something here?? Is it divine Karma coming around to me? Or Can I keep cultivating my training? Clueless, but I continue..