me and Niel out at the Poly Pier

For everyone that didn’t show up to the beach tonight… bad move. It was epically gorgeous in Avila and the water was 63(!!!!) which is the warmest water we’ve had in at least a year. This is my kind of “warm water,” it felt awesome. The sun was shining and there was a little wind but not much. Just enough to get the water moving a bit in a left to right kind of direction which is a little odd for here. We had some sailboats a  ways off shore and not much in the way of wildlife, just a couple of pelicans.

At first it looked like it was going to be just me and Niel but we picked up a third at the last moment. Niel picked out the route and decided we’d do something a little different. We were going to swim to the end of the pier, hang a right and swim all the way to the Poly Pier, then turn back to the buoy line to the Avila Pier before swimming back in.

view down the Avila Pier

Even though it was “warm” it took me a couple minutes to get acclimated… I was stalling a little bit until one big wave came out of no where and decided it was time for me to get all the way wet. Since you can’t argue with a wave bigger than you are tall I agreed. From there we swam out to the buoy line and stopped to make sure everyone was doing ok and then made our way to the end of the pier. On the way out there a jet skier shot past us a little too closely and a little too quickly. I don’t know if he saw us or not, I’m just glad he didn’t come back past us. Once we hit the end of the pier I took a minute to admire the sailboats off in the distance.

swimming to the end of the pier, sailboats in the distance

The pier to the middle of the other pier was our longest uninterrupted stretch. I tried to just hold pace with Niel and focus on what I was doing with my stroke. If I’m going to swim 10k this weekend I need to do it right if I don’t want to hurt myself in the process. At the other pier we took a bit of a break and I caught a couple of seals checking us out from a distance. Just 2 little heads on top of the surface, just like the 3 of us humans. I’m pretty sure they were making fun of us for being slow… seals are mean like that.

Niel and Dave at the Poly Pier

On the way back to the buoy line we passed through a few different warm patches which was kinda weird because I’m usually only lucky enough to find the spots in the ocean where the temperature drops 4 degrees :) The water today was probably the optimal temperature for me… not so cold you might die, but cold enough I was in no danger of overheating. I could have stayed out there for hours.

We ended up swimming under the pier so that we could come in at the same spot we started from. By now the shadow of the pier was darkening most of this stretch of water but it was still nice and warm. 3/4′s of the way in I stopped and waited for a ride the rest of the way in. It took a while before a decent wave presented itself, but once I got a hold of one I rode it all the way back to the beach. A perfect end to a perfect swim!

I think this one looks kinda spooky but in a cool way :)

Tonight I gotta get ready and pack my bags for Indiana. I take off Thursday night and hit the ground in Indy on Friday morning. Tomorrow I’ve got one last pool swim before I split town. I’m not totally sure what I want to do with it. Hard? Easy? Short stuff? Long stuff? Most of these open water races I’m not too concerned about, but 10 kilometers is a haul! Whatever we do I just want to make sure I’m feeling good and my shoulders are happy.

I made a quick excursion to Avila today partially to get back into some cold water and partially to help a friend get a little faster and more comfortable in the ocean. I caught up with Dani at the beach around 6 and we mainly just swam up and down the buoy line on the left hand side of the pier. It took me a little while to get all the way wet… this was about a 30 degree drop in temperature from my last open water swims… but once I was in I managed to acclimate pretty fast which surprised me. I guess my body is getting used to this extreme temperature yo-yo-ing.

I let Dani get out ahead and then chased her down at the first buoy. From there we worked on fixing a few things in her stroke to speed her up and swam down to the end of the line together. Next we tried a little sprint leg from that buoy back to the middle one. I swam right up in her business to simulate that race sensation. Normally on our regularly scheduled Avila swims everyone minds their own business, but we were trying to get her used to the stresses of swimming in a race with a whole bunch of other people.  From there we did a few circles of more stretched out swimming and her stroke was really coming together and was looking good. We finished up with a sprint back into the beach through the surf.

Hopefully all that swimming in circles, make believe pack swimming and stroke tweaking leads to some fast swim splits for her next tri! All told we probably swam about 3/4 of a mile… good enough for a day I would normally rest instead of swimming.

The ocean was all over the place tonight… plenty of chop that came from pretty much whatever direction it felt like coming from. I’m not sure if it’s true or aqua-geologically possible, but I’ve decided to blame it on the earthquake that happened 30 minutes prior down in SoCal. It’s a good story and I’m sticking to it.

We had 4 dudes swimming tonight and we decided to get in on the left side of the pier tonight because so many people were fishing off of the left hand side of it. There were actually a few pretty formidable waves in the mix when we were getting in. I took my time getting all the way wet today. Even though it was a balmy 57 degrees, I was a little slow getting acclimated for whatever reason. While waiting in some waist to chest deep water I saw a seal basically body surf the top of a wave. He was taking it parallel to shore with his head poking out the top, you could see the whole rest of his body through the face of the wave. It was cool to see and a good reminder of how much people suck at water sports when compared to our marine mammal counterparts. So the awesome part is I saw this while holding a camera… the downside is it all happened to fast for me to take a picture! Instead you get this professionally done artist’s rendering of the event…

I'm pretty much a MS Paint virtuoso

Anyways I was the last guy out to the first buoy because I took so much time on the beach. The plan was to swim the triangle (buoy line, top of pier, end of the other side of the buoy line, back to the pier and in) which is good for a mile and a little change. From the get go we could tell the swim was going to be a little harder than usual. We were getting tossed around a bit and the chop was pretty sneaky. It wouldn’t necessarily come from the same direction twice in a row, and it broke over your mouth while breathing with deadly precision. Half way to the top of the pier I almost yakked after inhaling a mouthful of briny wonder. Ewww.

When we regrouped at the end of the pier I was feeling way colder than I should have been. I don’t know what my deal is but I wasn’t processing the cold as well as I normally can. I wasn’t going to get in any kind of hypothermic trouble or anything, I just wasn’t particularly comfortable. I tried to hold a pretty good pace on the way to the next turn but it didn’t really generate any extra heat.

We finished by going about 3/4 of the way back to the pier and then turning towards shore. Normally we’d go in further but there were people fishing pretty far out on the pier and we didn’t want to go too close and get hooked for our trouble.

I changed into some drier clothes on the beach and had a bit of a shiver on me. Real subtle but it was there. This is notable because I almost never shiver. I spent 90 minutes in much colder water just like a week and a half ago with zero problems. I guess it’s just a good reminder that everyday is different when the ocean is involved.

My big swim this weekend is in Virginia and from what I’ve been hearing cold water isn’t going to be a problem… at all! Word on the street is I could be looking at as much as 30 degrees warmer for my 2 mile race on Saturday, yikes! I’m not built for that kind of heat so we’ll see how I do in borderline hot tub water. Tomorrow I’m sneaking in one last pool swim and then flying out to the east coast over night.