I said June 4. I swam July 30.

On June 2 I told you I'd be in a lake on June 4.

I got in on July 30.

654 metres. 23.7 minutes. Average heart rate 140. Fifty-six days late.

I work a 28-day rotation at a facility in northern Alberta. Seven days on, seven off, seven nights on, seven off. All twelve-hour shifts.

The Victoria 70.3 is next May. The swim there is 1.9 km. What I did on July 30 was 34% of it.

This wasn't my first time in open water. Mexico was, back in April, and I wrote that one up. This was my first time in Alberta water. Cold, fresh, and eight weeks after I put a date on it in writing.

Straight from Newsletter #2:

I meant it when I wrote it.

That's the part I'd rather skip, so let's do it first.

June 4 to June 8 was an off-block. Five days in Red Deer, on exactly the date I'd named. I didn't get in the lake, and it wasn't because I was at camp.

On the drive home the night before, a kicked-up rock took out my rear driver-side window. That killed the trip into Edmonton to buy the wetsuit, because I wasn't parking a smashed-open car full of luggage downtown for an afternoon. Sylvan Lake was sitting around 10 °C. Getting in at 10 degrees with no suit isn't tough. It's just dumb.

I also had my 2nd Class exam on June 8. That block had a job, and swimming wasn't it.

So I swam in the pool that week and told myself the wetsuit could wait for the next off-block.

That was the actual decision. One I'd make again, and one I'd stop calling a delay.

June 10 to June 30. Twenty-one straight days at camp. Overtime nights ate the whole off-block.

July 2 to July 6. Home. This was the one. It ended on July 4 with me head-first on pavement, which I wrote about on August 4.

July 8 to July 28. Twenty-one more continuous camp days.

Running travels. Lifting travels. There's a gym at camp and there's a treadmill, and I used both.

Water doesn't travel. No pool at camp, no lake within a two-hour drive of it. So the one discipline that needs a specific place and a piece of gear I'd chosen not to buy went to the bottom of the list and stayed there.

One decision plus seven weeks of no access. That's the whole eight weeks.

Ninety-five days apart. Roughly the same distance in the water, at a lower heart rate, which is the only line in that table I'm happy about.

Here's the line that isn't in the table. Garmin logged the activity at 23.7 minutes. Only 17.8 of those minutes were moving time.

Six of those minutes, I wasn't moving. That's the part a distance number hides.

The rock cost $311.64 in auto glass on June 5. That's the receipt everybody would point at.

The rest of it doesn't show up on a statement. It cost me the June window, then the calendar took June, most of July, and the only clean run of days in between.

Then on July 29, the day before I finally got in, $838.94 went through at a triathlon shop.

$649 of that was the wetsuit. $681.45 with GST. The rest was a new helmet, because the one from the July 4 crash was finished.

That's a correction to what I told you on August 4. I called $35 the whole repair bill. It wasn't. The helmet was a write-off and I hadn't clued in yet.

So the thing that sat between me and the lake for eight weeks cost $681.45.

It did a really great job keeping the cold out. That's the whole review.

I've now watched a deferred purchase compound the same way a deferred payment does, and the interest was eight weeks of the shortest training clock I have.

July 30. 654 m in the lake at 1 PM. Bench press, 233 lb for five sets, at 4:30 PM.

July 31. 42.02 km on the road bike at 200 W average. First outdoor ride since the crash.

August 1. 9.57 km tempo run, average HR 159. Then back and biceps.

August 2. Same lake. 1,003 m, 349 m further than July 30, at the same heart rate.

August 3. 1,100 m in the pool. Longest swim I'd ever logged. Then 32 km on the bike and a 3 km run off it.

Nothing about me changed on July 30. My calendar changed, and the thing I'd been putting off got bought.

The limiter in shift-work training isn't how badly you want it.

Week one, it was a decision I made on purpose with a good reason behind it. The seven weeks after that, it was access. Neither one gets solved by wanting it more.

I have plenty of motivation at camp at 3 AM. What I don't have at camp is water.

So when something slips, "why didn't I do it" is the wrong question. The right one is narrower and more annoying. What specifically has to be true for this to happen, and when is the next date all of those things are true at once?

For eight weeks the honest answer was "no date." Then there was one, and it took an afternoon.

654 m was 34% of the Victoria swim distance. Three days later, 1,003 m was 53%. Alberta water closes in September.

I'm at camp from August 5 until I travel home on August 26 — twenty-one shifts, fourteen of them nights. That leaves one off-block, August 27 to 31, before the season shuts on me.

By the time this hits your inbox, that window is already behind me.

It was, and it went the way the rest of this piece went.

I got in the water three times. 1,175 m on August 27, 725 m on the 29th, 300 m on the 31st. All three in a pool. The 27th is the longest swim I've logged.

The lake didn't happen. My last open-water swim is still August 2.

Which is the thesis proving itself one more time. I wasn't short on motivation in those five days. I swam a personal best inside them. I was short on the same thing I've been short on since June. A lake, and a day the lake and I were in the same place.

Next week: what a 2nd Class power engineering ticket is actually worth.

Reply and tell me the one training thing you keep saying you'll start next month. I want to know whether it's a decision or a calendar.

— Kiegan