30 min swim

Good swim today. Not great but good. I've actually felt like crap for most of the day and I'm blaming it on the start of football season last night. Actually, I'm gonna blame it on the Brooklyn Brewery Local 1 beer I had last night while watching the game. I know beer is not a good thing for an athlete, but I gotta live a little, right? Whenever I do have beer, it's usually one or maybe two bottles/cans at the most. I happen to LOVE beer (and good beers at that), so holding myself at 2 is discipline. I don't believe that one or two beers has ever effected my training, especially with all the sleep that I am now getting.

So I drank the beer last night, not realizing that it was 9% alchohol (as oppossed to the usual 4-5% that most beers are. I only had a pint but it put me on my ass. So...it's the beers fault.

The swim was uneventful, just a half hour, mostly of drills and some 50 yard sprints. I'm happy with my swimming, but I know it's still a weakness. I really want to be a complete triathlete and not specialize in any one thing. With that, I feel like my cycling and running are close-perhaps with cycling holding a bit of an edge-but my swimming needs to speed up a bit. For a half iron race I'm around 30 mins, but I know with some good work this winter I can get much faster. I've never had a swim lesson and intend to get some over the winter with a capable coach.

So thats about it for today. On a side note, I think it would be irressponsible to not recognize the significance of the date. On September 11, 2001, I was in college and sitting through a boring Geology lab. As word came through that we had been attacked, my the girlfriend and I headed out to my parents house. Being that we were only about 18 miles from the towers, it was absolute mayhem on the roads heading toward Eastern Long Island. I can't exactly remember the ride or how long it took, but I remember being numb. It was the closest I've ever come to an out of body experience. I remember not being able to even eat (which was HUGE for me as I weighed 250lbs at the time). It was the worst day of my life.

In the coming days, after heading back to school, I remember that we could go to the roof of the University Library and see the smoke from the towers. Being so close to ground zero was surreal. It was a living nightmare.

Many people were effected in many different ways by this event. Many people I know lost loved ones in the attack. Those, like me, fortunate enough not to have lost any family members on the day were effected in different ways. For me, the attacks of September 11, 2001 took from me the last of my innocence. It showed me the evil and hatred that lives in the world. September 10, 2001 was the last day of my old life.

I do have to say that there is one positive thing that came from this unfortunate day. I can remember that everywhere I looked, people were helping one another and actually being nice to one another-not an easy task in New York! Patriotism was at an all time high and we seemed to forget about the small, stupid stuff that gets in the way in our everyday lives. People looked for the humanism in one another. Life slowed down for a bit and we pulled together. Mostly, we all looked at one another for what we were. Money and status didn't matter as much-we were all just humans. I haven't seen anything like it since.

May we never forget those that perished AND those that helped. People gave everything so that others could live. Even the people on cleanup and recovery crews are still paying through illness and discomfort resulting from being there. May God bless all these people.