Weekend Swimming Adventures, Plus a Visit to MD Tattoo Studio

On Saturday, I had a fun little travel day. I pulled out of my driveway at 4:50 am to head to Conejo Valley to catch a morning workout with my team, Conejo Valley Multisport Masters (on a daily basis, I train by myself at a pool here in town, but at meets, I am attached to CVMM and am always welcome to train with them when I can get down there).

Flipturn (those are my feet!) - Photo by Rob Dumouchel

It was a great practice, led by Coach Jeff, aka the King of Pain (nobody warned me of this beforehand - ha ha). We got in a little over 5,000 yards by 8:30, so that definitely got the day rolling.

Coach Jeff - Photo courtesy of Rob Dumouchel

My friend Rob (who runs the fantastic RobAquatics blog) was there and introduced me to many swimmers that I hadn't met before. He also lives far from the CVMM pool and is a satellite swimmer for the team like I am...and it just so happens that we picked the same weekend to mosey down to the Valley.

Photo by Rob Dumouchel

After practice and a nice breakfast, Rob and I drove to another pool in Simi Valley to attend a Backstroke Clinic run by Coaches Ahelee and Nancy. My backstroke definitely needs some TLC, so I was happy to get some pointers from these two outstanding instructors.

With Coaches Ahelee and Nancy

Here are some fun underwater photos from Rob's camera taken after the clinic.

Rob & Jinxi Underwater: Photo courtesy of Rob Dumouchel

With Helene: Photo courtesy of Rob Dumouchel

After my two pool adventures, I hopped on over to Northridge to visit Mike DeVries and his wonderful crew: Katelyn, Jeff, Josh, and Jamie (London wasn't there on Saturday, unfortunately) at MD Tattoo Studio.

Since I have been training consistently for the upcoming US Masters Nationals meet in May, the necessity to stay in the water consistently has made getting tattooed a little tricky (gotta stay out of chlorine for a week)... so I have had to put aside a few ink projects and thus haven't got to see my MD buddies for awhile. So it was really great to catch up and hang out for the afternoon. While I was there, I also confirmed an appointment with Mike in June at the Ink & Iron Tattoo Festival in Long Beach and am ecstatic about the piece we have planned.

It was also fun to talk about Tattoo Prodigies, the book that Mike, Jamie and I worked so hard on this last year, and which JUST came out this week. I will be doing a blog in the next few days, with lots of detail about all that it entails, but here are a few sneak peek photos below.

Yay for fun weekends!