I'm so behind so I'm going to make these next few blogs quick and easy. In mid-July I entered a swim meet in Ithaca (in the Finger Lake region of central upstate New York). I decided it was a good excuse to go on a trip to wine country!
The swim meet itself was a long course meet, so it was in an Olympic length pool which is 50m long. It is very different swimming a long course meet to a short course meet (25 yards or 25 meters) like my last meet in April but I wanted to give it a go. I estimated my times based on what I swam in April with a little buffer. Master's swimmers in NY apparently don't swim long course very often so the times swam were often quite different to the entry times. This meet was much bigger than the last one, as long course meets are few and far between up here (just like the UK I suppose)! I swam the same events as last time... 50, 100, 200 Back and 50 Fly. I did better than I thought - my entry times were about right but it felt a lot harder than last time. I managed to win my age group in all the backstroke events and came second in the fly. It was a beautiful almost brand new pool too so all in all, a good morning of swimming even if it was hard!
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| I won some blue ribbons! |
After swimming we headed on the Cayuga wine trail and stopped at a couple of wineries for some tasting and some buying. It was getting late so we only made it to two, followed by some delicious locally made ice cream. Yum! Dinner was in downtown Ithaca, which is a really lovely place, but we were once again disappointed by a Mexican restaurant in NY. There must be good ones somewhere right??
Anyway, we camped by the lake on Saturday night and got up bright an early for a hike around Taughannock Falls State Park (where we camped). We started out at an overlook by the falls, which was a great view on a beautiful morning. We then hiked all around the rim of the gorge that the falls had carved out, followed by walking up in the gorge to the base of the falls and then back up to the overlook. It was a nice, fairly easy stroll and so pretty. We didn't see many people until we walked the flat path to the base of the falls so it was even better.
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| Taughannock Falls from above |
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| Cayuga Lake |
Can't complain about another great waterfall!
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| Taughannock Falls from the bottom |
Then it was back to Albany for a brief rest before work on Monday.
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| At the falls |
