Great session and I find out how fit riding mats is making me!

It is those sessions that start out with little expectation and turn out to far exceed them that can often be the most rewarding. I know you know what I mean! Keeping in mind my new found wisdom that the smaller the mat you can take out the better, it was the Standard I chose for the moderate onshore conditions that were prevailing. I toddled off around the bay to what I thought was a reasonable left but on the way out to it thought that I saw a better looking right so headed there instead. A few waves came through providing rather less than notable straights in the main before I suddenly started to find a left that reoccurred 6 times. This is the best result I have had for a session for sometime. I would count 5 of them as most reasonable with the last being a throbbing winding blast of a ride through a myriad of wave formations that the mat seemed to enjoy just as much as I did resulting in a loud exclamation of delight from both of us! Ok.......? That sounds a little weird doesn't it? But it really felt like the mat and I had become one! Can mats have a soul too? Anyway, that is a good place to have got too isn't it? What do they call that? Nirvana! For a moment, for a moment!

I have thought for sometime now that riding a mat has greatly increased my fitness, particularly aerobically, as it is such a good work out for much of the old bod! I got proof of that today having decided that the conditions were just too blown out to bother going out. I decided instead to go for a swim at the less populated end of the Prawn Rock Channel. This is a beautiful blue still waterway that runs around an islet at the inlet mouth that is very popular place for families to frolic in. With the intention of just cooling down really, as it was quite a hot day here, I started swimming up to the first of the two bridges that span the channel. Now some years ago, in my previous home town, I  used to swim a kilometre at the local swimming pool on those blown out summer days instead of going for a surf exactly as I had chosen to do today. So I was not confident about how I would go but found I was swimming most comfortably (good old Australian Crawl) and so much so that I went on to the 2nd bridge and back resulting in a swim of close to a kilometre that was surprisingly easy to accomplish. I knew my arms were strong and I suppose that I should not have been surprised the legs were too and but I barely raised a breath as I made my way out of the water to a slightly pissed off Michelle and the dogs wondering where the hell I had got to! So there you have it. Another great reason to go mat surfing. It takes your fitness to another level!