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I was in two minds about swimming today. Have felt...not great today...partly from lack of sleep, partly general fatigue and feel a bit ill. My lower lip is still raw from a bit of ramyeon I slurped up over the weekend. I only used a quarter of the spice in a sachet, and as soon as I sipped it, it just seared my lip. Today is a few days later and it's still sore.

I decided to swim anyway, since I wanted to give Corneli something, and thought some grocery shopping would be good to do aswell. I made a deal with myself to only swim 2km, but to do them hard.

I like the Wednesday routine. Always feel better after the swim, and find the exercise boosts my productivity. Today, for example, after swimming, quickly blitzed through some shopping, and then in a whirlwind, cleaned up the kitchen, through in some washing, hung up 3 days worth of laundry, and swept the floor. Thanks swimming!

The lane was packed, so going hard was out of the question. Even dived in the next lane, but that proved even worse, so went back. After about 500m I managed to get everyone in line, and then it was very enjoyable. I'm feeling fitter and faster, and am doing the 50's regularly in 37 seconds, did the last one in 34 seconds. Almost all of them were about 10 seconds quicker than anyone else. 10 seconds in swimming is quite a long way. It's almost halfway across a 25m pool.

Swim: 2.5km
Time: 50 minutes
Weight: 81.9kg
Best 50m: 34 seconds

As you can imagine, after my 3 hour plus cycle on Tuesday, it's crazy that I'm heavier again. Think I am going to train harder and only eat Burger Kings and chocolates and beer since I'm not losing weight anyway. (Er...just kidding.)

Also found out who was mystery rider with Ee Sung Hee. He was in the pool, and the fastest swimmer. Seems like quite a serious and hardcore triathlete. He said that they eventually turned around and waited for me but I never came up the hill. I guess they just sped up the hill and used their momentum. At the time it felt like they'd suddenly panicked seeing me turn round and were racing away...
Anyway, I'm still glad I had that day on my own to feel my way around and get into shape and back up to speed at my own pace.
They're cycling again tomorrow. Don't feel up to that now, but maybe I'll feel better tomorrow morning.

They keep asking me if I'm doing Cheolwon, and I think it seems really dumb to them that I can say I'm feeling very unfit. The swim, in truth, is the least on a triathlon, and everyone always says you can never win a triathlon in the swim, but you can lose it. Being Nick van der Leek, The King of Exceptions and Chaos Theory, I am proof positive that you can win a triathlon in the swim. I did that last year at Tongyeong, where the swim was a bit on the long side, and gave me a massive cushion over some much better runners than me. I won that race by over a minute, because of a fast swim, very quick transition, decent cycle, even faster transition, and very average, actually slightly bad run.
I'll go with the mantra I used in Sokcho: If you're not sick, go for it.

At school...and I have to say, every time I write about Hagwon Life I feel like it is so trivial, and dumb, it's like talking about what you did in the bathroom, which razor blades you used, and what you decided to do with your toothbrush. Dumb. It's even dumber to get so wrapped up in the trivial that you start to take it too seriously.
Anyway the director made a big decision today. Since the staff room which contains...hmmm...6 teachers in fairly cramped quarters has no aircon, he's decided to move us to his office, which is about twice the size.

I think aircon has zero to with it. He wouldn't really give a shit if their were puddles of water dripping under us. This is his way of keeping a careful eye on us. I caught some reference, in all the blah blah in Korean, about going downstairs to buy bread. That was me. Missed lunch today, so in my 5 minute break I went downstairs and bought two muffin things and later 2 cokes to blast away the sleepy feeling that was hanging over me.

If he thinks being in his office is going to prevent me from eating when I'm hungry he's going to have to catch a wake up. I hope he enjoys an office full of hungry teachers, sometimes eating water melon that parents bring, and messing the crumbs of lunch on the run. All the teachers are grumbling because none of them want to share space with Mr Wonderful.

Phil Liggett, the Tour De France commentator, has a sore throat, but fortunately has decided not to abandon the Tour.
On the same topic, got an email from a friend of mine, Alex, who said if Lance wins this one, this 7th Tour, then he'll have his respect. I guess being the only guy in history to win 6 (one more than anyone else) is still fairly meiocre eh. I wonder what I have to do/or have done - to earn his friendship/respect?

Have actually asked him and one or two other cycling friends to dedicate themselves, with me, towards pursuing the 2006 Argus together, trying to race it as a team, under 3 hours. As a team, but at the end of the day, still racing each other.
We'll see how that goes.

Also got some other interesting emails.
Now I have to watch how Lance caused so much damage in yesterday's stage 10.