LCM v. SCY? OMG! WTF?

This morning, I went to our local municipal pool for the opening day of the summer season. Today was the official start of the free early-morning swimming that the pool offers, which means I got to get out of the gym pool, which is a 4-lane, indoor, short-course yard pool, and out into the eight-lane, long-course meters outdoor pool. And for a little while, I was the only person in the whole pool. It was awesome.

But hard. Geez, I had forgotten how much harder it is to swim long-course meters; I've gotten so used to the rhythms of my gym pool. At the gym, I know that the yellow square on the wall should appear when I breathe to my right on the 12th stroke, and that if it doesn't show up again when I breathe to my left after my flip-turn I didn't push off the wall hard enough, or my first strokes were lacking. All that is gone in the outdoor pool; I have no landmarks or stroke counts to rely on (yet). That will come. For now, swimming outside in a huge pool is just freaking awesome.

Actually, all things considered, where I live is pretty good tri-training land. It's hardly Austin or Boulder, and nobody's going to move here anyime soon just for the training quality, but for those of us here already, it's got:
- an outdoor LCM pool that is FREE during the early morning;
- a local park with a nice paved path;
- a decent loop for riding shorter rides and intervals;
- a river (not exactly swimmable, but good for scenery);
- proximity to Philadelphia and Fairmount Park for riding; and
- proximity to Wissahickon for great trail running.

I'll take it. Visitors always welcome. :)