June Fish

Don't look now but there's something new on the GWMD! We might have missed some key events so far in 2017 but we're at least here now to give you the highly anticipated preview of tomorrow's Oberschleißheim 4 km swim race! This one promises to be a doozy. You'll no doubt have memories of the world-famous Oktoberfestlauf which has been featured more than once I'm sure here on this particular site. Pemulis and Joelle have been multi-year participants and have even both made visits to the associated podium and partaken in Erdinger Weißbier post-race refreshment more than twice. Well, if you're at all familiar with that race and its environs then you will quickly become acclimated to the setup and everything of tomorrow's Langstrecken Schwimmen München because they share the same venue! Whereas the Oktoberfestlauf is a running race that has participants running around the Olympic Rowing lake, the Langstrecken Schwimmen München is a swimming race where we swim right through it! That's right, that disgusting water that you look at as you're huffing and puffing on your second loop of the Oktoberfest run and briefly thinking "I'm so tired and sweaty and boiling hot and I would just love to jump in that (at first) inviting-looking water" and then you quickly realize it looks kind of pretty dirty and you change your mind and finish the race and just drown yourself in Erdinger Alkoholfrei instead. Yes, that's the water we'll be swimming in tomorrow. And it turns out that's all I have to say about tomorrow's swim festivities and Helga has yet to wake up from her nap so you might be in for a treat and have the option to read about other topics that will be featured just below...

What else is new around here, you ask? Let's see... Pemulis, Joelle, and Helga will finally be moving into their new place in about 1.5 months time. The new neighbourhood doesn't seem to have much to offer compared to Haidhausen (their current haunt) and the home itself unfortunately clearly requires a lot of work but hopefully it will all work out. Before the big move, however, this here protagonist-family is shortly on their way (again) to... Italy! But this time they won't be going to the fake Italy where people speak German with Austrian accents; instead, they are heading to the real Italy where people sit around in the sun, eat pasta and cheese, drink wine and espresso, and hopefully have kind older Italian ladies taking care of their children. The Pemulis family will leave by car from München for 5 sun-filled days at the end of June in the beautiful wine (and various other Italian food/drink products) region of Piemonte. They will be guests at a real live functioning farm (so novel since they've never stayed on a farm before) and they will partake in meals featuring some of the finest foods to ever grace God's Green Earth. Following this, they will travel some 40 minutes west to the town of La Morra where they will stay at a winery for a couple of nights. But this isn't just any winery. This is the very same one at which Joelle spent some unforgettable nights 15 years ago as a spoiled vacationing camp counsellor away from the Swiss rich-kids sleep-over-camp. Exciting times await. Finally, they will decamp from Piemonte and head north back towards Switzerland/France where they will meet up with Pemulis's sister Claudia (I guess that will be her alter-ego here) and Claudia's husband Jim [?]. There they will stay in a rented Chalet just outside of Chamonix featuring world-renowned views of the epic Mont Blanc. It will be a trip for the ages! (they hope)...

And now it looks like there's even time for an Ironman training update. Status? If we're following the DEFCON graduated levels of readiness scale then I would venture to estimate that we're sitting around a DEFCON 2 level (remember that DEFCON 5 is full-on nuclear war-level readiness). The big swim [see supra, para. 1] tomorrow should be good for assessing the swim DEFCON level and we don't need any particular events/tests/whatever to assess that both the biking and running need a lot of work still. However, things could be worse! We have been biking and running and though it would be nice if we could have done more than we have done, I'd say things are more-or-less acceptable at this point. But don't be holding your breath for any breakthrough performances, please.

Und... It's time to wake up Helga! Peace.

post-script: here's a picture from January (her hair is way longer now...)