Let me just start by saying, the Farallon Island swim is no joke. This is not something to be taken up lightly, if at all. Frankly I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it has actually been completed by a non marine mammal. It has all the hallmarks of a bad idea: fast moving water, extreme cold, large swells, boat traffic, and of course the ever looming threat of a visit from the landlord as we push deeper into the gnarliest corner of the Red Triangle. On Wednesday night/Thursday morning I watched a man take on the burliest, blackest, angriest water I’ve ever seen. My hat is off to JC for attempting to tackle this most unforgiving and unlikely of swims, I watched the whole thing from the deck of the SEQUEL and had a hard time determining if I would ever have the audacity to start such a thing. Anyways, let’s start at the beginning shall we?

I’ve never actually met JC in person before I found him in the parking lot of the San Francisco Yacht Club, but through the magic of the internet we’ve been chatting intermittently for quite a while. We have a lot of friends in common and are the same age. Back in January I got a note from him asking me what I was up to in May and if I’d be interested in crewing a swim for him. Based on my personal geography I assumed were probably talking Catalina, maybe a Santa Barbara Channel swim, but I wasn’t sure because he wasn’t specific in his need. Either way as long as I had the time available I was in. After asking a few more questions to figure out where we’re going he asks me to keep it in stealth mode and then drops the bomb… Farallones… stfu. I had two major thoughts when I saw that. One – of course I’m coming now! Two – are you out of damn mind? Haha, it was a shock… in my mind one does not simply swim to the Farallones much like one does not simply walk into Mordor. It just doesn’t work that way.

thanks laying it out for us Boromir, you're always such a downer

His dates were a little tight for me but I managed to work it out with my office to ensure I could get up to San Francisco on time. In the years my current business has existed my dad and I (we work together/started the business together) have had a general rule… first 3-4 business days of the month no one is going anywhere because we’re too busy. I think what put this particular trip over the top into exceptionville was the destination. My dad used to live in San Francisco, he was very familiar with our ill advised destination. As a dude I think he felt compelled to let me slide this one time in the name of adventure. In the weeks leading up to it we talked a lot about the um… biodiversity of the swim. Remember not only does this place get swarmed with pinnepeds and white sharks you also attract other apex predators like orcas. I know most of us have a pretty positive Shamu type appreciation for killer whales, but they’re pretty serious business… they can kill a white shark, as documented out by the Farallones, pretty sure they could swallow a human if so inclined.

So thoroughly amped up to go help a friend take on a swim of epic proportions, I hopped in the truck Wednesday after I was done working for the day and made a mad 265 mile dash for San Francisco. Somewhere around Palo Alto I got a call from JC checking up on my progress and got to chatting a bit. I asked him how he was feeling about the whole thing and he was a little nervous but ready to go. He said “like any other marathon swimmer I just have to get out there and put my head in it.” Good answer. Luckily I picked the right combination of highways and missed all the traffic. I rolled into the yacht club probably around 9:45 and gave JC a call. He came out to greet me and show me the way to the boat. We chatted a bit, this being the first time meeting each other in person and all, but we both had sleep on the brain. He needed to rest a bit before swimming and I needed to rack out if I had any chance of staying awake for the swim after only a few hours sleep the night previous, a full day of work and a long drive. While in the cabin I also met Andrew who’d be crewing as well. We spoke a little and then I turned my backpack into a pillow and crashed for an hour or so.

I woke up around midnight to Vito, our captain, boarding the boat and starting to get things in order for the trip. The rest of the crew filtered in shortly thereafter. We had Phil as an observer from the Farallon Islands Swim Federation and John from the South End Rowing Club who came out as a pace swimmer. Before leaving we got a quick visit from Joe Locke who just made an attempt at the same swim just a couple weeks ago. He put in a strong effort but the water dove to 47 degrees and the reality of the situation is that a human can only sustain life for so long at that temperature. I’m pretty certain Joe intends to hop back in again soon to give it one more go before White Shark season gets underway.

view from inside the SEQUEL en route to the swim start

A little before 1am we were motoring for the Golden Gate Bridge. I love the view from under the bridge, but this was different. It was the middle of the night and a huge moon loomed off in the distance. The base of the bridge was lit up a little bit and there was this orange haze that floated around it. I’m not sure what the proper adjective would be to describe the scene, but majestic and magnificent are my top choices. Beyond just the aesthetic beauty of being in this little boat surrounded by black water under a giant orange bridge on a clear night, there was a certain electricity in the air. My senses were on fire with the anticipation of the adventure we were about to set out on. Last time I was at the base of the bridge it was daytime and I got stuck in a whirlpool with a friend, we stayed away from the outside of the bay because it was too rough out there… this time I’m out there in the dark about to throw a guy into the ocean and tell him to swim away from the continent as far as he can. Craziness.

A few minutes before 1am Vito tells JC he can go anytime he wants and he did the damnedest thing, he jumped off the fucking boat like it was nothing. If it were me I would have hemmed and hawed, cracked jokes, complained, possibly waited for another invitation to go… a parade perhaps? I need a little fanfare. JC just tossed himself into the inky black waters of the Pacific under the Golden Gate with zero hesitation like he does this shit all the time.

JC and Andrew on deck

The swim was on and so was the ebb tide. The good news was the water was ripping from San Francisco out to sea, the bad news is that’s not a particularly smooth and calm process. JC was assaulted with big swells (my guess would be 6 feet-ish) with all kinds of random potato patch turbulence that area is famous for. I posted myself up on the deck outside with a glowstick (good thing to do on night swims so your swimmer can tell you’re watching) on my jacket and watched the whole swim unfold minus a handful of puke breaks on the other side of the boat. Every once and a while we’d hit a line of whitewash from the ocean and the bay colliding as one tried to push further into the other. Despite it being very dark out there there was enough light from the moon and the city behind us to allow you to decipher the shapes and sizes of the movements in the water and I think it’s fair to say that was some of the burliest water I’ve seen with a person in it. The whole thing still plays in my head as I contemplate whether I would ever have the balls to take on such a ridiculous thing.

At 30 minutes we were set for the first feed. Andrew was in charge of that and I think JC was starting with some Gatorade. The water was in the low 50′s at this point and he was doing pretty well (it’s worth noting he had a successful ice swim earlier this year).  The feeding had a few technical difficulties but we learned how to fix that up and make the future feeds a little smoother. In the early phases of the swim JC was having some technical difficulties with his goggles as well. I think he was fogging up and having a hard time seeing. After the first feed I started taking stroke counts. In hour one we were up around 62. Phil was doing the same thing on the boat and we compared counts occasionally to make sure we had similar numbers. It wasn’t always easy to see JC between the dark and the rough water, a lot of the strokes I counted were based on hearing them not seeing them.

As we charged on the water stayed agitated but we made extremely good time as the tide spat us out into the open ocean. The Golden Gate became smaller and smaller until ultimately it was just a line of lights in the darkness. It’s pretty weird to push that far out into the blackness away from the mainland. In Southern California you at least have the Channel Islands to break the power of the wide open ocean a bit and give you the sense that there’s some sort of land boundary between you and the vast unknown expanses of the sea. In San Francisco you have no such luxury. All we had was a brilliantly bright stripe of silvery moonshine in front of us and city lights behind us that were rapidly falling away, blurring together, and eventually disappearing. It’s an eerie feeling.

By about the third feed JC yelled to us on the boat that he wanted hot chocolate to heat up his insides a bit. Andrew worked on getting that all put together and JC went back to swimming along side the boat until it was time to feed. Around this time we started seeing some buoys in the darkness that drifted right along the side of the boat. It looked like fishing gear to me, I asked Vito and he told me they were crab pots. I didn’t even know people crabbed right there. It’s a good thing we had JC far enough off the side of the boat that he didn’t hit one of those things!

classic nighttime marathon swim shot...

Apparently Farallon Island Swim Federation rules say no pace swimmers in the first 3 hours of a swim so JC was out there from 1am to 4am with just him and the space between his ears. Who knows what was going on in there. Internal radio? Quiet panic? Determined self affirmation? Random contemplation of anything besides what may lurk below in the darkness? Hard to say, but he was chatty at feeds. As opposed to quick and dirty in and out drink and toss type feeds he would float beside the boat to drink, ask questions and contemplate peeing. I was a little worried about the length of his feeds although I do the same thing in similar water temps. My concern was mainly raised from his dropping stroke count and the fact that I heard him either throw up or dry heave really hard a few times. We started around 62 strokes per minute but were now hovering more around 54 and would eventually bottom out at 52/53. There were a couple feeds where he’d ask about progress and we just had to yell at him a bit because the tide was turning around… yes you’re moving forward but you have to KEEP moving!

JC kept good track in his head of how many hours he’d been swimming and on the feed prior to 3 hours he requested a pace swim be ready to hop in. John was itching to get in from the moment he boarded the boat so we let him take that first swim with JC. As JC finished drinking that next feed and swimming away from the boat we tossed John off the boat and he swam out to meet JC. Things didn’t go so smooth at first. Pacing in the dark isn’t the easiest thing you’ve ever done. When you’ve never swam with the other person and there’s a major speed discrepancy it’s even harder. At first John had a hard time slowing down and kept getting ahead of JC. We yelled at him from the boat to get out of that spot and stay next to JC not in front of him, didn’t want him to give him an accidental draft, plus it’s against the rules. Moving the guys side by side created a new problem, they were crowding each other towards the boat. JC damn near hit the boat at one point while I shouted at him to back off. It was a little dicey. On the boat we were questioning whether we’d be giving him any more pacers while it was still dark out. Although it was most likely a mental boost to have company it was looking pretty bad for actually swimming. Luckily after a while both guys figured each other out and managed to swim together pretty uneventfully for the remainder of John’s shift. The funniest part of the whole thing to me was JC’s response to the initial chaos. He said something along the lines of “no disrespect to John, he’s doing a fine job, I’m just not used to swimming with a pacer.” How many people can be so polite at time like this? John stayed in swimming very slowly based on his own natural pace for as long as he could stand the cold. His presence helped JC pick up his stroke rate a little bit and undoubtedly perked him up a bit.

With John on board getting dried off and trying to warm up JC was approaching the nadir of his Farallones excursion. The night had gotten extremely dark during the pace swim leg. The moon was gone and it was going to be a while before the sun broke out over the surface of the water. We were all alone save for the far away lights of container ships in the distance. At one point JC stopped and declared “this is a dark hour.” It was pretty obvious that was more than just a literal interpretation of our evening. The swim was getting to him. The dark. The cold. The unforgiving beating from the sea. They were all taking their toll. As an added bonus he was having a hard time peeing which is bad news in a marathon swim. He started asking questions about distance and how close we were to the Lightship. I ducked my head in the cabin to ask one, what’s the lightship? and two, how far. The lightship is some sort of large lighted ship or buoy or something that essentially marks the mid point of the swim. It was 2 nautical miles out. The way the question was asked I wasn’t sure if JC wanted to know to set small internal goals, or if it was the new goal and he wasn’t going to tell us yet. The way his stroke rate and navigation were going it was starting to look like we’d be making that call before he would. Ultimately we did pass the lightship and we kept charging into the night waiting for the sun to finally rise up and change the whole feeling of the swim.

JC kept plugging away, fighting with everything he had, he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. We encouraged him best we could and as the east coast started waking up I was getting tweets and text messages from people wanting to get status updates and send along encouragement. You could tell JC really liked hearing that guys he looks up to like Dave Barra were proactively keeping tabs on him 3000 miles away. Little bits of brightness in an extremely dark place.

In the last 15 minutes of JC’s swim he started getting really squirrelly. He was reporting a big temperature drop, his stroke degraded in a major way and his navigation completely fell apart. Although his mind was still in the game we were watching the sea finally break his body. The captain told Andrew to put a suit on and go check JC out in the water. We tossed Andrew in and he went and looked JC in the eyes and asked him a series of questions to get a grip on whether JC had a grip. He was fairly lucid but slurring a bit. Although we’d occasionally been a little fast and loose with the truth for motivatory reasons up until this point Vito gave it to him straight from the deck. The flood tide was starting to win and we had at least 10 more hours of swimming as it stood right now. JC took pause and then made the right decision – get back on the boat and live to swim another day. He’d successfully swam 12-13 nautical miles off the US mainland through incredibly rough and cold water in the dark of night.

I don’t care that we didn’t make it to the islands, that was a sufficiently bad ass swim for me! I think only a small percentage of your hardiest open water swimmers would have ever even jumped off that boat in the first place in the dark swirling waters below the Golden Gate. I’m still not sure if I’m man enough to do that, JC gained a lot of my respect for making the attempt and it sounds like this won’t be his last dance with the Farallones. I have a feeling we’ll see him on this coast again soon looking to claw and fight his way through the hellacious waters between San Francisco to the Devil’s Teeth. Good luck to JC on getting ready for round two and thank you very much for allowing me to come along on the boat and have this experience that so few people will ever have I deeply appreciate it.

This week at the pool my lunchtime workout buddies were talking about doing a Splash and Dash at Hancock College over the weekend. A 500 yard swim and a 5k run. One by one each guy decided to enter and copious amounts of shit talking grew from there. Although I’m in no danger of running (hooray for back injuries ಠ_ಠ) a timed 500 sounded like something I should do so I set my alarm to go off early Saturday morning with hopes I’d actually wake up and go swim. I’m bad at mornings, but amazingly I woke up early enough to ride the snooze button for 45 minutes and still show up on time. In my haste to leave the house I did forget small yet important things like goggles… heh, whoops… luckily a lot of the guys like the same goggles I do and Berto lent me a set of B70 Elements which is what I usually race in.

I’d never been to the pool at Hancock… I actually didn’t even know they had one despite having a diploma from there… but I found it easily enough and started finding my buddies in the parking lot. While registering I found out I could sign up for just a swim which was cool, that way I didn’t have to DQ from something. I paid my registration fee, got numbered and then went to check out the pool. The pool, well… let’s say it’s not ideal for racing. Any pool is a good pool, don’t get me wrong, but yikes. The lane lines were pretty questionable with most of them under the water, one lane had a water jet in it that supplied hot water to the pool, there weren’t normal gutters, the walls had diamonds on them instead of crosses which was hard to process while swimming, and there were some ladders at the corners that would be bad news for whoever drew the outside lanes. Luckily our group included a swim coach so he got them to tighten down the lane lines some more and to take out the ladders for the swim. While he worked on that I braided down my beard for some sort of speed advantage? Haha… It was a pretty hot look.

Our unofficial team consisted of me, Mike, Berto, Duke, Chad and Ken. We all swim at PNAC together during the week, Duke and Chad are Avila regulars, and most of them except for Mike and I are into the whole triathlon scene. Somebody talked the race people into letting the 6 of us start together so we could race amongst ourselves a bit. A few minutes before go time they told us to go grab half a lane each. Mike and I both went for the solidest lane lined lane in the pool. We’re the swimmeriest of the group so we knew what was up. The two of us in one lane was prone to being a bit tight if we were shoulder to shoulder, but I was pretty certain he’d drop me within 200 yards. We dove in for a quick warm up 50 and when I got back to the wall they moved me into my own lane because I was the only one starting at that time who wasn’t going to do the run. Uh oh. Right to the janky lane. Crap.

Around 8:30 they started the first round of swimmers from a push off the wall. I started entirely too strong, but I think that’s what some of the guys wanted in hopes that I’d draw out Mike (the fastest swimmer of the 6 of us) and make him work harder on the front half than he wanted to. Best I could tell I led things for the first 100 by a lot more than I should have. Whoops :) I don’t have any splits, but it was definitely too fast… it may have been a touch under a minute. Besides starting at an unmaintainable pace for me, my lane was trying to kill me. On the far end of the pool I had to swim over a jet of hot water which sucked the life right out of me. Not cool. I’m like captain cold water over here so a burst of 90 degree water to the chest when I’m trying to get somewhere in a hurry is no good man! I also kept getting sucked into the lane line on my left side. Ken said he felt like he was pulling a pretty decent draft off me. He was a bit of surprise. He’s a quick in shape guy but I thought I’d put more distance between us on the swim. I think I coaxed him into taking things out way faster than he wanted too… later on he talked about his heartrate being way too high when he transitioned into his run.

On my last lap a counter poked a kickboard with a red X on it underwater to let me know I was on my last turn and I tried to pick it up for the finish. I’m pretty sure only Mike finished in front of me… as the other guys came in I cheered/high fived/fist bumped them on their way to 5k run glory. I went to go check on my time and nobody had it. Some students with clipboards and stopwatches huddled together (the event was put on by a recreation management class at the college) to discreetly figure out what happened because I obviously wasn’t going to figure out they totally missed it, haha. It was decided I swam about a 6:05 based on when other people finished. Why not. My previous best while racing a lot more was 5:44 in a techsuit so a 6:05 right now, assuming that’s near correct, is cool with me.

I dried off and changed back into my shorts and watched Berto wrap up his swim. He’s the slowest swimmer of the bunch but a beast on dryland. I followed him out onto the course and then worked my way backwards along it to spot my guys running. Ken was busy dominating, Mike was holding off as many guys as he could, Chad was working his way up, Duke was occasionally getting lost, and Berto was out to run down anyone he could. The guys had to do 3 laps of the campus for their 5k. Each lap  I tried to intercept them at different spots to cheer, harass, and/or warn them that someone was gaining on them with my best distance estimate.

Ultimately Ken won the whole thing, Chad cruised in after him, Mike held onto third with a really strong run, Berto was our next guy in after catching Duke, and Duke came in a little after him. I think our lunchtime crew basically finished with no one else in between so that’s a pretty good showing for our imaginary team :) We all hung out for a while talking about the race and watching other people finish for a bit and then we all scattered. Some of the more enterprising guys went for a bike ride to supplement their morning’s mini race… I went in search of a nap to make up for my early wake up. I’m still waiting for a multisport event with swimming and napping, I feel I may be dominant in such a combination.

Last Monday I did my first flip turn in probably a month. That was partially my fault and partially due to maintenance at my pool taking waaaay longer than initially advertised. I think the pool was supposed to be down for like 10 days, that turned out to be extremely optimistic. Things opened back up during the week prior to my return but my swim buddies weren’t back yet so I just relaxed and stuck to messing around in the ocean until Monday came.

That first swim back I wasn’t sure if anyone would be joining me yet so I invited my roommate along to mix in a bit of a swim lesson for her. She swims solo at the Pismo Beach Athletic Club (where I used to train back in the day) after spin classes and we talk technique over the kitchen table sometimes. I figured we should actually go to the pool together to see what her stroke looks like in real life. Her swimming is pretty solid but had some room for improvement. We talked high elbows, less bend in the knees while kicking, and streamlines. Between our first test 50 at the beginning of the workout and one at the end after working pretty hard we had a 5 second drop! I was pretty stoked with that! Hopefully she keeps coming along occasionally to swim with us and work on getting better. In the midst of all that I was also popping in and out of a workout with Chad. I set the plan for the workout and between helping my roommate I swam whatever part of the workout he was on. Ultimately I probably only swam 2000 yards, but it was an ok start. On Wednesday and Thursday nights we did a couple more workouts in the low 2000s and our group started to grow again. Thursday saw Kelly, Dan, Chad and myself… next week I think Jason might join us too.

During the week I mixed in a couple trips to the beach as well. I hustled down to Pismo after work on Tuesday with my GoPro to do some photographical experiments as the sun came down. The tide was way out and the surf was pretty anemic. I swam out to where a couple surfers were still trying catch a few waves before it got totally dark. I got to spend maybe 30 minutes in the water, but once the last surfer left I decided I should probably roll out too… especially after I saw a few marine mammals pop up and wonder what a person was still doing in their ocean.

On Thursday I got a quick surf session in at lunch time. I paddled out on the south side of the pier and mourned the loss of our major surf from the last couple weeks. After lots of nice hollow barrels we were back to waist high mush. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. I caught a few ok waves, got some sun, and improved my mood for the rest of my workday. I got out a little colder than I usually do though, not sure what my problem was that day.

Saturday morning it was finally go time for the one hour swim after maybe 6000 pool yards and a little bodyboarding… not sure you could be more ready than that :) My team (Conejo Valley Multisport Masters) had 60-70 swimmers participating on Saturday morning and we were split into 2 heats. I was in heat one and would be timing in heat two. Since I came a from a couple hours away I didn’t have my own counter, but we managed to wrangle one up from the team.

I was pretty apprehensive about what my tired untrained body was going to produce in an hour… I was pretty sure it’d be ugly, but I was just going to lay it out there and see what happened. The nice thing was we had digital clocks set up on the side of the pool so I could at least tell where I was through the whole thing. I started my swim way too fast, but with what felt like minimal effort… it felt harder later though :) I tried to lay off a bit in the first few hundred meters, and within the first ten minutes I think I found my stride. I thought a lot about fractions during the swim… as in how much have I completed? 2/5? 13/20? 7/15? In regular life I can add to save my life, but put an expiration date on my swim and I turn into a damn mathematician!

As time wore on I didn’t feel so good so much as I felt like I was doing pretty good. I passed my lanemate a few times along with the guys in the lane beside me. I tried to really work my walls and take advantage of the fact that I have pretty good turns. A half an hour in I started to build a cramp in my thigh from all that pushing but it never turned into a full blown disaster cramp. I could kind of shake it out between walls before I had to flip again.

As time wore down I just focused on staying consistent instead of speeding up. Once I lock into a pace that’s where I’m staying, trying to go faster just feels harder and doesn’t seem to actually get any faster. On the back half of minute 59 I had the clock in my view and knew I’d hit the wall one last time and pick up a little change on the other side of my flip turn. I took a big turn and pushed as hard as I could. When I came up to breathe the stop whistles were blowing.

In the back of my head I was hoping to at least crack 4 grand on the swim since I was in the low 4′s the last couple years. When I swam back to the blocks my timer announced my distance of 4008 yards, yes! Just barely made it! I was pretty pleased with that considering I hadn’t been training for pool stuff. After I dried off and changed I sat down behind the same block and counted for one of my teammates who also didn’t have her own timer.

It was really nice to reconnect with my coach and a lot of my friends during the one hour swim. This is the 3rd year in a row I’ve come down specifically to do the swim and I always have a good time. I didn’t see my team as much as I would have liked to last year since I didn’t travel as much to meets in 2010, but I think I might show up more often this year.

A swim meet? In a pool? Me? haha… it’s been a while hasn’t it? Saturday morning I found my way into a meet here locally in San Luis Obispo with my swim buddy Kelly. The masters meets here in town are usually just 1 heat of men and 1 heat of women so they mix us into the existing kids meets. When Kelly and I got to the pool it was packed with kids! There’s a metal bleacher section that the masters usually gravitate towards but it had been over taken with pop up tents, fold out chairs, towels and swim parents. We ended up finding some free space in a far corner back behind the blocks. Other grown ups joined us eventually. A new local team, the Avila Bay Masters, set up next to us and they had a good little contingent of 5 swimmers. Not bad for a new team! After getting deck entered and socializing on deck a bit Kelly and I went to warm up a little. I swam a few hundred yards of mainly free with a little fly mixed in before hopping out. My back was really tight and I was kinda worried that would be a problem later in the day. I hopped out and dried off while Kelly kept going. Once I figured out about what pace the meet was going I texted my girlfriend to let her know about when my first event would be so she could come check it out since she’d never been to a pool meet before, as a bonus she was my chief of photography for the day.

My first event of the day was going to be the 100 fly which I haven’t done in quite a while, even in practice, so I was curious to see how that would go down. Since it turned out only 2 masters were going to swim it they combined us into a heat with the kids. It was a pretty eclectic heat… a girl in her early 20′s, a big bald overly-bearded guy, and then a couple teenage guys. I felt ok off the start and kicked out as far as I could, I was a little deeper than I should have been though and probably lost a little time just getting back to the surface. I tried to hold back a bit up front so that I wouldn’t gas out at the end, I wanted an even application of power… that’s a fairly unreasonable request, but it’s what I wanted. I turned at the 50 feeling ok but knew my last 25 wasn’t going to be super fantastic. At the last turn I took a big deliberate breath before pushing off and inhaled some water out of my mustache, whoops! Hazard of mixing sprints with adventure beards I guess. I got no real underwater action on that last turn and did my best to finish strong. Half way down I could feel the piano starting to lower itself onto my back, but I kept my stroke rate up and finished first overall for the masters! Out of 2… but hey who is counting right? I swam a 1:03 which isn’t that great for me (I’ve been as low as 58 in USMS), but better than I thought I was going to do without training for short races. I figure once you account for the beard I’m totally under a minute though :)

Next up was the 50 breast which has always been more of a palate cleanser type of event for me. I’ve never been a breaststroker so I’ve never felt any pressure to be any good at it :) This race was all kind of a blur to me. Dive, pull down, glide… glide… glide… stroke like crazy for the wall and turn so I can get back to that underwater part I’m sorta good at. I finished somewhere around 35 seconds which would make it my worst scy time ever… heh, alright go team! Remember when I could pop off a 31? Those were the days… oh well, still had fun.

I finished up the day with the 100 free and it was pretty rough. My back was really starting to seize up and I was pretty sure I only had this one last event in me so I made sure to scratch out of what would have been the last event of my day, the 50 backstroke. From the get go this race was a mess. My back freaked out off the start and I could barely kick. My whole race was arm driven. Each flip turn hurt a lot and I didn’t get my usual big push and dolphin kick action from them. I tried to up the kicking on the last 25 but it just wasn’t happening. I cruised into the finish in a 1:01, another personal record in the wrong direction.

After the meet Kelly, Jamie and I went to downtown SLO for lunch and some beers at Firestone Grill. Not a bad way to finish a meet :) Although my times weren’t so hot and my body is feeling a bit of a mess, I had a good time. It’s always fun to go do some sprints in the race pool and hang out on deck with your friends. It’s also good to know where your speed is at by checking it like this. The bad news, my speed across short distances is hurting. The good news, I’m not focusing on short distances these days. I’m not sure when/where my next pool meet will be, but I need to plan out a few of them if nothing else just to be social and go see my SoCal pool friends.

I swam my 4th Naples Island Swim this weekend, I love this swim and it’s become a must attend event for me. So much so that despite an incredibly angry back I still piled myself into the truck around 4am and drove the 4 hours to Long Beach. There were a lot of moments during that drive where I wondered if maybe I should just turn around and go to sleep… but that wasn’t an option. Naples Island has become a bit of a personal tradition for me and I wasn’t going to miss my annual 1 mile cruise through the canals.

I was up at 3:45am, wondered if this was good idea and then tumbled into the truck. Once it was gassed up and GPS programmed it was just me and the cruise control sailing down hwy 101 in the dark. The upside to waking up so ridiculously early is there’s no traffic and I never really had to slow down even once I hit the 405 and the sun came up. After arriving in Long Beach I made a quick pit stop at the Vons over by the Belmont Pool for some gatorade and something to nibble on and then drove the rest of the way to the beach.

When I got there I saw some Laguna Beach Oak Streaker friends and shortly thereafter my buddy Jason who swims Lopez Lake with me arrived. My buddy Evan from FreshWaterSwimmer.com popped up early as well. The skies were overcast and the water looked pretty mellow. There were some rowers out in the water but there were also some lifeguards on jetskis that looked like they were telling them to wrap it up to make way for  the day’s races.

I went over by the dock and got myself checked in and numbered and goody bagged. You could definitely see Merritt’s influence on the t-shirts this year, they’re car racing themed (she’s an engineering genius for GM and car nut). I went and said hi to her real quick since I knew she was busy event directing and whatnot, and then went back to see what was going on with everyone else back on the beach.

One of the best parts of this race is just hanging out on the beach before and after the event. I got to see a lot of my favorite people as well as friends I haven’t run into in person for a while. In the middle of talking and catching up I got suited up and applied some body glide. I went with the classic zebra stripped Rob Aquatics suit… the white stripes aren’t so white these days on that thing, it’s seen some things! A lot of different bodies of water have filtered through that thing!

As we neared 9 I made my way to the start area and waded into the water to get a feel for it. There was a sign at the check in table that said it was 62-64, that seemed pretty spot on. I tossed myself forward to get the rest of the way wet and came up a little grossed out. The water wasn’t tasting quite right today. A lot of people perceive Alamitos Bay as being a questionable body of water to go play in, and most of the time they’re wrong. I’ve probably swam over 25 miles in various races and training swims over there and this is the first time I’ve had an issue with the water smelling/tasting bad. I would liken it to drinking sweat out of a large man’s shoe post running a marathon. Delicious right?

As we got ready to go I put myself in the middle of the pack a few rows back for the start. I figured that was about right for me on this swim, I typically finish in the middle somewhere. Despite that centralized placement it was a friendly start with minimal bumping. I did take a hit to the eye and a few kicks to the side a little later on during the first leg of the swim. I had a younger kid on my right with a thrashing for survival style stroke that slugged me right in the goggle, luckily he was probably 120 pounds at most and it didn’t hurt that much. I had someone on my other side who did the breaststroke at random to sight, it’s always fun to have one of those around you. Luckily we all spread away from each other once we entered the canal… once we finally got to the canal… that swim to the first turn always feels way longer than you’d think it would be.

Inside the canal it felt almost like there was a tidal push on the front half of the canal portion. Not sure if that was real or imagined. I held between the middle and the outside edge of the canal just to have some personal space. No one really got in my way out there which I enjoy. Plus on that last right hand turn out of the canal I can usually cut it real close and jump up a few spots on people who were following the other side. A fair number of people that chase the inside edge actually get wrapped up in that and start to go for a second lap of the canal until a guard cuts them off and turns them around!

Last leg is straight back towards the beach and I sighted on a yellow triangle buoy that I figured was for us and tried to keep it as straight as possible. Once my hand hit sand I stood up and shuffled it in. I was pleasantly surprised to see my friend and kayaker to the stars Beth Barnes right there at the finish smiling and waving. I grabbed my popsicle stick with my finish number on it and gave it to the results people. I was the 36th person overall (of about 89 according to the results) and third in my new 30-34 age group (unfortunately of only 3 according to the results).

I chatted with Beth for a while then rinsed that water off me best I could. I didn’t want to smell like that for the rest of the day. Afterwards I changed back into real clothes and then posted myself up on the dock next to the swim finish so that I could shoot some pictures of people sprinting to the finish. I staked out a good spot to put my towel down and then laid down to get an almost water level view of some of our finishers. I think my favorite part was when a little 8 year old looking kid was swimming in for the finish from the 500m and the 3 mile winner Alex Kostich came racing up on him. Watching Alex have to get past an 8 year old to claim his victory was kinda amusing :)

After my friends finished swimming I went back to the beach to socialize and pick up my 3rd place medal. The nicest part of being friends with the race director is my last name was actually pronounced correctly for my medal :) I hung out on the beach as long as I could but my back was really not feeling well and I couldn’t fake the smiley face any more so I had to split… 4 more hours in the truck didn’t sound good, but I kinda had to do it at some point so away I went! I think I’m going to be taking it fairly easily this week in hopes that it feels better and I can get back to regular workout life.

This past week I got to crew my third channel swim in about 8 days, this time for my friend Evan of freshwaterswimmer.com. Evan and I met last year through the blog and then made friends by swimming races all over the country together. We met officially in person at the 2010 USMS 1 Mile OW National Champs in North Carolina and from there we swam together at races in Lake Del Valle, Colorado, Noblesville, Charlottesville, and Chicago. We even got a swim in together in Santa Barbara on New Years Eve in advance of my polar bear swim from Pismo to Avila. When he started making noises about maybe doing Catalina sometime last year I was pretty stoked because it’s something in my backyard that I’d be able to help out with. In fact I think I actually invited myself along to crew and blocked out days off at work before he even asked me… possibly before he even officially booked the boat :)

My journey started suspiciously like the Catalina swim the week before with a drive to Orange County, but this time it was to drop off a kayak as opposed to picking one up. I’d been carting Lynn’s kayak all over California on top of my truck for the last week in part of an elaborate scheme to make sure Cliff had a boat for his swim and that there’d be a kayak on site for Lynn’s swim. It was good to see Lynn again a few days after Anacapa. She’s still stoked and riding high on that swim. I was hoping to get in sometime on my bodyboard in SoCal while I was down there that day but the water was flat all the way down the coast… I can get 0-1 foot waves here at home thanks :) Instead I also got in a short visit with my friend Bekah for a light pre-boat ride snack.

From there I drove back up to San Pedro, but this time it was for a ride on the Bottom Scratcher. I ran into one of the guys from the Outrider that recognized me from Cliff’s swim and I asked him what kind of conditions we could expect. He said they’d been having some rough evenings but the mornings have been relatively nice. At this point I was really hoping I had my sea legs fully developed and that my scopalamine patch was going to cover me on this ride!

Evan’s Boat Crew left to right: Garrett M., Barb H., Gracie VDB, Evan M., Rob D., Mark W., Neil VDB, Anne C., and Amanda H.

Since I was an hour early I got all my gear sorted out into a swim bag and a carry on reusable grocery bag type thing, made a few phone calls, and tried to just shut my eyes a bit. As we neared 8:30 I wandered down towards the water and found most of the crew starting to assemble. Gracie, Niel, Anne, and Barb were all right there. Soon after we had a whole gang of Morrisons (Evan, his parents, and brother/pace swimmer Garret) along with Mark (who just so happens to be a 10k OWS Olympian from 2008). You can read up on everybody on the team here.

We loaded the boat up together and then sat out back while the Captain gave us a briefing on the fine art of not being chopped to death by a boat propeller. I’m pretty sure Evan’s mom wasn’t a fan of that part of the evening, haha. Our lead observer Anne Cleveland followed it up with the regular CCSF spiel. As we prepped to split the harbor Evan’s folks said their goodbyes and went back towards dryland. The rest of us went into the galley where Evan gave us the run down of his swim plan. He told us what the feed plan was, where he wanted paddlers, how he wanted pacers to help, etc. Once the boat got going I stayed in the galley for a little while and helped Neil and Gracie modify Evan’s feed bottles. He had pre-mixed feeds in regular water bottles with string tied to them for retrieval purposes. The kayakers didn’t think that would work so hot so they McGyvered together a new set up using some zip ties to make loops around the tops of the bottles to attach carabiners to… smart these Van Der Byls…

The ride out to Catalina was rough but I was feeling pretty decent. I decided to try and sleep a bit on the way there since I was pretty much exhausted from all the other channel crossing helper type stuff and driving I’d been doing the past week. If I was going to get in and swim with Evan at all I was going to need my strength, the dude is fast! I slept lightly while the bow of the boat bounced heavily through the ocean. This much motion last week would have ended in an all but certain yak attack off the back of the boat, but apparently today was my day to finally not get sick, phew!

I woke up when we stopped moving and wandered out into the galley. Evan was there with a big smile on his face getting ready to go. He was already greased up and was downing some pre mixed feeds in advance of hopping in. We got to work on glow sticking him up. I cracked a couple sticks and Barb safety pinned some to the tag of his suit and two more went in his goggle straps with the hopes that they’d hold right there from the tension and he’d be able to pull them out when day broke and he didn’t need them any more. Evan had initially planned on starting a little later than most swims do so that he’d have more time to swim in the light, but we were there and he didn’t want to wait for nothing so around midnight it was decided that would be go time.

Evan went out on deck, stretched a little bit, and waited for the boat to position itself. A crew member had a high powered spotlight out to help guide him to where he needed to be in the cove. Evan stepped down onto the step behind the boat and then dove out into the sea. His goggle glowsticks didn’t follow however and were floating at the surface where he entered. Evan swam back, grabbed his sticks and got back on the boat to reattach them with safety pins this time. I ran into the galley to get pins and somebody else attached them for him. With that, take two! Evan dove in again and followed the spotlight through the kelp, past the buoy line, and onto the beach. He cleared the water, put his arms up and then let them down to let us know he was going to start. He did a mini sprint to the water’s edge and then took off like a shot from the island! I can just imagine how much adrenalin was pumping through that guy in that moment. Standing in a spotlight on a pitch dark beach with a whole big black ocean between you and the goal you’ve been working towards for such a long time. I guess some day I’ll know, until then I just have to imagine what Evan and all my other friends that do this are feeling in that big moment before starting this kind of journey.

Evan caught up to Niel who would be the first shift kayaker until the sun came up and they got down to business cutting quickly through big rolling water. I watched intently through Evan’s first two feeds (every 20 minutes) and then went back to the bunk room to snooze a little more. He didn’t want any pace swimmers in the dark and was breathing right which kept his face away from the boat and pointed towards the kayak so there wasn’t a whole lot I could do for him right then. I crashed out for a couple hours and came back out to watch him swim and cheer at feedings. It was beautiful outside, extremely starry. Catalina had already faded away into the dark of night and the lights of the city were already visible in front of us. Despite the conditions Evan was rapidly chewing up the ocean meter by meter.

After being up for a bit I slept a little bit more. I’ve never been so tired on a swim in my life… too much channel action in too small of a space I guess… The next time I woke up it was for good, I’m pretty sure it was the bag pipes that roused me… a Bottom Scratcher exclusive :) The sky was greying up and Evan was still swimming really strongly.

There wasn’t the usual thick marine layer on the coast during the morning so that meant we actually saw the sun rise. It came up like a big red ball and lit up the sea like it was made of liquid metal. It was gorgeous. As it rose it passed through some clouds and then poked back out above them and lit our way for the rest of the trip. Around this time is when we made the decision to send Gracie in to swim. Originally she was going to kayak but she’s also a hell of a swimmer and the only person on the boat besides Mark that was really in Evan’s league speed wise so it was decided to repurpose her into a pace swimmer. Mark replaced Neil as a paddler and stayed in a kayak all the way to the end of the swim.

We kept Gracie in for about an hour which really perked Evan up. After a long night in rough seas I think sharing the sunrise with another swimmer was a major boost to his morale. Since that went well Anne worked on scheduling out as much of the rest of his swim with pacers as she could. She wanted to toss in Evan’s brother Garrett first. He has a water polo background and isn’t an ocean swimmer so he was a little apprehensive about the whole deal, especially when you compound things with his being incredibly sick on the boat. I gave him my duckfeet fins to wear and we got him to refuel with some sports drink to get his energy up and assured him he’d feel a lot better in the water than on the boat. Evan also gave him some brotherly motivatory shit talking from the water while backstroking next to the boat, gotta love that :)

After one feed cycle solo we put Garrett in the water and then I got ready to go for a swim as well. I brought my laguna surf fins as well which is good because I can’t hang even with a tired Evan fin-less. At the next feed I jumped in and joined the Morrisons already in motion. In Evan’s swim plan he wanted the boat on his left, then him, then pace swimmer, then the kayak. Since there was no provision for a second pace swimmer I took his left side between him and the boat.

The three of us swam together for 20 minutes until the next feed. Evan was holding a great pace and I really had to do work to keep on him. You could tell we were getting close by the color of the water and the occasional stalk of kelp that looked to actually be attached to the bottom of the ocean as opposed to just free floating. At the next feed they pulled Garrett back to the boat and that left just Evan and I in the water. I put all my focus into staying out of his way and just keeping up best I could. He was pretty slow out of feeds, but that speed just kept building as we continued out of them. A few times he drifted left and cut across my line. Each time I either stroked way sideways or just stopped to let him cross me. At 8+ hours into his swim I didn’t want to bump into him and cause either a small injury or a big cramp!

I think the original idea was to put me in at such a time that I’d be around until the end so there’d be someone in the water to take pictures and help out once he cleared the water line if he needed it. Mathematically at the time I went in this would have made sense… unfortunately the current had other ideas and really slowed that last chunk down. They pulled me out at 40 minutes, and if I would have stayed a full 60 (the limit) we probably would have still been half a mile out so the plan was a no go.

Videography by Amanda H.

Back on the boat I watched anxiously as my friend ground out the last part of his person powered journey back to the mainland. Off in the distance whales were keeping an eye on us as well. Once we got to the thick kelp the boat had to park and wait. The Bottom Scratcher has a chase boat, Bubba, that was already out and waiting for Evan and Mark to approach the shore. Captain Greg and Anne C. were on Bubba having adventures of their own while Evan cut through the kelp.

At approximately 8 hours and 55 minutes Evan reached the California mainland and cleared the water. I watched from the bow of the boat with the rest of the crew and cheered as loud as we could in hopes that he would hear us way out there. His folks were there on the beach to greet him along with open water all star Forrest N.

original photo by R. Morrison, editing by Rob D.

Celebrations out of the way Evan reentered the water to swim to Bubba which chauffeured him back to the mothership. Mark paddled himself back and Neil, Gracie and I worked on getting him back on board. With everyone safely aboard and Evan reheating himself in the shower we started to motor back to the harbor. We had dolphin escorts putting on a show around the boat. They were jumping and diving all over the place. A great finish to a great swim. Back at the dock we unloaded, talked about the swim, and tried to let it all soak in. It was a great effort and a smoking fast time. I’m really happy that I got a chance to come along and support my friend in such a big swim and hopefully we can do something similar again sometime real soon!

original photo by R. Morrison, editing by Rob D.

Yesterday I swam my third Santa Cruz Rough Water Swim and I still totally dig the race. It’s a fun easy to navigate course with a ton of other people. It’s still reasonably low pressure and they give you a lot of space at the start to spread out if you don’t want to be fully in the mix at the beginning. Hopefully I can keep the streak alive next year and do swim #4!

I started my day at 6am in the truck. I drove up from Pismo in the morning and it took me about three hours to touch down in Santa Cruz. I was about half an hour too early for check in so I wandered around a little bit to get a feel for how the course was looking. The water was pretty calm but there were some small but heavy waves breaking right at the shore that were plenty capable of taking your feet right out from under you. After a little while a line started forming over by the check in area so I made my way over there to wait. While in line my buddy El Sharko came by to say hi and contemplate whether we could get a refund on the roughwater since it wasn’t actually rough :) Once the gates opened I got through pretty quick. Got my number drawn on me, picked up my race sweatshirt (yeah!), and got my timing chip and cap.

Not too long after I spotted Sylvia who I didn’t even know was coming and then Niel popped up maybe 10 minutes later. It was very cool to have an Avila Dolphins contingent at the race!

Before the race got going Sylvia and I both made our way into the water to see what we were dealing with. The official race temp was 58 but my human thermometer disagreed. It felt more 56-57 to me and I found out later that the surf report had it listed as 55-57 that morning. Regardless it was pretty brisk. I took my time getting in then swam out about 25m and just floated. I swam in to talk to my friend Jody who was doing the same thing before getting into her race suit. On my way out of the water I chatted with Sylvia a little bit and then ran into my buddy Walt who I haven’t seen in a pretty long time.

Back on the beach I dried off and waited for the race instructions which are followed by the march to the start line. I always wonder what people not involved with the swim think about that procession down the beach. Hundreds of people in caps, goggles and swimsuits emerging from under the wharf and walking towards the boardwalk.

At the start line I took a moment to hop back in the water to get that feel on me again, and then got up in line. I chatted with some Creeker friends and then Niel who would be in the wave behind me. Although we all knew the signals for the start of the race I think a lot of us weren’t paying good enough attention to the flags on the lifeguard boat that marked the start. People started to rush towards the water and then other 70% of us had the epiphany that, hey maybe we should go swimming too :)

Despite there being a lot of people in the race I didn’t have too much contact with other swimmers on the way out. I worked my way through a few folks and then fell in behind a guy about my speed that I couldn’t get around. Instead I took the draft for a bit and was joined a few minutes later by a girl who wanted in on that action as well. The three of us adjusted to this guy pulling up front and the other two of us on either side just behind him. Maybe 3/4 of the way down the pier he gassed out a little and we shot past him. Good ride while it lasted, thank you kind stranger :) Oddly this was the same spot that the temps perked up a bit. I’d believe that this warm spot was 58ish, but the rest of the swim, not so much. Soon I had a new dude swoop in from my left side and park in front of me as a draftee replacement but the speeds didn’t mesh well. I kept hitting his feet and I hate to do that to people. Our lines ended up diverging anyways. He gunned for the pier and I hung a little further out. On this race I don’t like to hang too close to the wharf itself for 2 reasons… 1 it’s not necessarily the shortest route because it bends, 2 fisherman. The good news is that this year they said there were people patrolling the wharf and making the fisherman stop for the race and if they didn’t a lifeguard could zoom by on a paddle board or jetski and just straight cut their lines so nobody got hooked. I’m a fan of this concept!

On the last chunk of the left side of the wharf I settled into a pocket that was pretty much just me by myself. I rounded the tip between the pilings and a guard on a paddleboard. I could hear the sea lions barking in between breaths, luckily I didn’t smell them this year! On the other side of the pier I swang a little wide because of the bend in the pier. I wanted to aim straight for the finish instead of following the line of the pier. By the looks of my GPS I think I did a pretty decent job. I could always see arms and caps to my right but never anybody to my left.

As I neared the beach I saw a couple green caps start to catch me, crap. The 40 and overs were in green and my goal was to not get caught. They got me just barely. The lead pack swarmed up on me and I think that I was the last swimmer they caught… damn. I felt pretty suave about only finishing a second behind my friend Jody, it’s just best we ignore the part where she started 5 minutes after me… haha.

Post swim I was de-timing-chipped and went to dry off. I talked with a few people on the beach and then went in search of Niel’s wife, Kris. She was on the beach with her camera waiting for him to cross the finish (she took all the pictures in this post btw, thank you!!!). He came out pretty cold so she went to go check on him and left me with the camera to catch Sylvia’s finish. While waiting I saw a lot of busy lifeguards helping people out of the water and a lot of faceplants. The surge right there at the water’s edge was tricky and it rushed out strongly at your feet making it really hard to get a foot down and walk out successfully. Sylvia finished like a champ brushing off the lifeguard to finish with out help.

Our Avila crew regrouped on the beach to rehash the race and debate the water temps a bit as open water swimmers are prone to do… we also discussed post race nutrition, as open water swimmers are also prone to do :) I was going with Korean food in Marina and Niel was off for Mexican in Monterey, I’m not sure what Sylvia went in search of.

All told really fun swim. Solidly run as always. It would have been nice if the sun had come out for it, but it’s always a little foggy up there in the morning so I guess you can’t really complain. I’m looking forward to coming back next year and hopefully I can sneak in a few bonus Santa Cruz swims in between!

Yesterday I made my way south to Santa Barbara for a fun little marathon swim adventure. Despite it only being 90 minutes away this was my first time swimming the Semana Nautica 6 Miler. This swim is a great point to point from Goleta to Santa Barbara with a set of rules I can really get behind: “As in the tradition of open water swimming, the use of wet-suits or other non-porous attire, kickboards, gold chains, booties, paddles, swim buoys, body suits, triathlon suits, fins, gloves, or other wimpy contraband will not be allowed. No exceptions!!” I really dug this event, it was a real deal ocean swim with plenty of rough water, rad swimmers, and interesting sea life spectators floating by in the current. Jane and her crew did a really great job making this an exciting race that was fun to be at, it had a really cool vibe and a return trip is definitely on my list of things to do!

Although this was a solo swim for me it was really a team event. My swim and surf buddy Danilu came along to be my paddler. We started our adventure entirely too early with her coming to my place at 5:45am. We loaded her kayak up on my truck’s rack and started our 90 minute drive down to Santa Barbara. Dani is an Ironman Triathlete and Ultra Marathoner so even though endurance events are old hat to her the world of marathon swimming isn’t something she’s seen up close and personal. On the ride to Goleta she asked some questions about how things would go down and how being a paddler for me would work out. My plan was to keep her on my right side and to feed every 25 minutes, I’m pretty low maintenance.

Down in Goleta Jane, the race director, spotted me right away and came to say hi. We’d actually never met in person before but have lots of friends in common. It was nice to finally put a face to the name, especially since we all live so relatively close together. Shortly thereafter a bunch of my friends started showing up. We had my local swim buddy Dave VM, my Swim22 swimmer Chris Dahowski, my Laguna Beach favorite Lynn Kubasek, my buddy Bill Ireland who was profiled on the site last June, and plenty of other familiar faces like 4 of the guys from the Ventura Deep Six relay and various folks I’ve seen around at different SPMA open water races.

Since the swim is a point to point endeavor you need to plan ahead a bit for kayak and person transport. I called Dave VM last week about it and we teamed up to get it taken care of. Dave, Phil (Dave’s paddler), Chris D., and I all drove down to Arroyo Burro beach in separate cars to drop off our kayak/paddleboard transporting vehicles and then we all jumped into Dave’s Camry to ride back to Goleta Beach for the race start. I’m really glad we figured this out in advance or else it definitely would have stressed me out pre-race.

Once we got back I changed into my suit, used some of that Foggle stuff to clear up my goggles since I didn’t get a chance to go buy a fresh pair, and worked on getting my feeds loaded into the kayak. While Jane was giving her race briefing I worked on lubing up a bit… hooray Bag Balm :)

Post briefing it was time to get the kayakers and paddleboarders squared away and in the water. I walked the boat down to the water’s edge with Dani and got her moving out towards flatter water. Obviously this is when a little set of waves got going… haha, oh noes! Other kayakers were taking quick swims and flipping boats over but she made it out like a champ as I yelled out marginally helpful advice as waves advanced on her “don’t stop dude! paddle paddle paddle!!!”

As 9am drew near, Jane drew a line in the sand for the start. All the swimmers massed up behind the line and chattered a little bit until Jane started us and we ran off into the ocean. Well I sauntered at best… no need to run when I have a 6 mile swim to contend with :) The water was really comfortable, about 65-66 and acclimatization was pretty much immediate. I caught a tiny wave just right on the way out and it pushed a bunch of water under my cap and made it start rolling up… crap… by the end of the pier I was so frustrated with it I just took it off and gave it to Dani to toss in the mesh bag with all my feeds. Luckily I sunscreened my dome pre race, but I definitely came home with some goggle tan lines on the back of my bald head.

Once I ditched my cap I worked on settling into a comfortable rhythm. I’d taken off a bit fast since I was in a pack of people, but now that things were spreading out I could start to do my own thing. I had one guy in my general area that was a little bit faster than me. I turned it up for a bit to try and pull a draft for a while. It took some doing but I caught him and managed to get in position. Only problem was his line was all over the place and it wasn’t worth chasing if I was going to have to zig zag to get there. I broke it off and focused back on just keeping Dani on my right side.

After we got out of the start phase the first hour was pretty uneventful from a swim perspective, but the water was really rocking and I was worried about Dani up there in the kayak. She was getting tossed all over the place but holding it together really well… it’s a good thing we practiced this on a choppy day in the lake! She said if she stopped paddling at all the ocean would just turn her in a circle back towards Goleta. During some of my feeds she told me that other kayakers she could see from her vantage point had taken tumbles into the sea! That was a pretty good confirmation of the seriousness of the conditions for me… it was as big as I thought. Checking back later at the nearest buoy on the NOAA site the swells were probably 3-5 feet and marcated as very steep. I would almost liken it to a salty water escalator. The swell was really angular… it’s hard to explain if you weren’t right there I guess.

Lynn Kubasek mid swim!

While cruising along I ran into all kinds of free floating kelp and sea grass which was a little disconcerting at first. I was having mini Monterey flashbacks and waiting for something to sting me. Luckily there were no jellyfish out there… just an increasing amount of kelp that all happened to be flowing back towards Goleta Beach… thanks to my kelpy friends for a confirmation of a current. I even saw some little blue fishes which was cool, I never see fish in the ocean. These guys came by in small schools and were probably 6-9 inches long and within about 5 or 6 feet of me. I was pretty geeked out on that and then probably one of my raddest ocean creature encounters ever… a juvenile Mola Mola swam right past my head! Those guys can get huge, like thousands of pounds, but this was just a little guy… maybe 12 to 18 inches long right now. A Mola Mola if you’re not familiar is also called an ocean sunfish and is pretty much the ugliest fish you’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting and one of my favorites to watch swim around at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, you can read up on them here. I got an up close side view, but from above Dani had no idea what the hell just floated by. She thought it was a decapitated chunk of something or a piece of whale a shark bit off and spit out into the current. I told her it was a Mola Mola and she just looked at me like I was making up words in the middle of the ocean now, haha… we Googled it on the way home for verification that I wasn’t full of shit :)

not a pic of my Mola Mola, just one for reference :)

My one disappointment on this swim was that all the interesting stuff above the water to look at was on my left side and I don’t really breathe over there so often. The middle of the swim course took us past all kinds of cliffs and Hope Ranch which is home to some ridiculously expensive houses. I saw some of them but not too much… I wish I had a working waterproof camera right now! Hopefully I can borrow some pics from a few friends this week to fill out the view for you guys!

As we neared about mile 4 I started to see other swimmers again and it lit a little bit of a fire under my ass to pick it up and catch up. Apparently it takes 4 miles for me to warm up now? Catching up turned into passing, and eventually I went into full on beast mode and jammed through 5 or 6 swimmers in the space of about a mile. That was huge for me motivationally and you can see it in my kilometer splits from my GPS. I went 17, 21, 23, 23, 25, 22, 20, 17, 17 plus a little extra for the last partial km. To add some bonus context to the back half of that swim, it got substantially more kelptastic and I was doing a lot of kelp krawling. That might have been part of my advantage over the other swimmers right there, I go play in Pacific Grove with the Kelp Krawlers and have gotten pretty good at swimming over kelp that’s almost thick enough to practically stand on!

The last couple miles I really tried to hold a strong pace and keep distancing myself from other swimmers as I neared the finish. Normally I’m not that competitive in ocean races, I’m just out for fun, but I got a flare of competitiveness on this one. It’s not like I was battling for a top spot or anything, I finished somewhere in the middle overall, but all of a sudden I just really wanted to beat whoever I could actually see. While we were going about this I had to move on the other side of Dani’s kayak because the swell was tossing the back end of her boat right at my head and we couldn’t separate ourselves from each other enough to ensure I wasn’t going to get a love tap from that fin on the bottom of the boat. It took a little adjusting to sight off of her on that side, instead of staying at my side she shifted forward far enough that I could see her while sighting forward like I usually would on an unescorted swim.

A dude on an SUP let us know that we were within a mile of the finish and I kept my foot on the gas. Only problem was the kelp just got thicker and thicker. I hit a patch that was most definitely the densest patch of kelp I’ve ever traversed in my life, but I wasn’t going to be deterred. We took one last feed and I finally saw the buoy that marked the turn to the beach, awesome!

After rounding the buoy I finally had the swell at my back instead of pumping over my right side, it was nice to get some assistance for a change! Once we got into the surf zone Dani peeled off and looked for an opportunity to land the kayak and I started to work my way through the waves as well. In the pre race briefing Jane had warned of rocks below the surface at the finish so I definitely didn’t want to body surf in. I let a few waves pass over me and then put a foot down when I thought it was shallow enough. Good news is I was partially correct, bad news is that next step was a doozy! I stepped right into a rocky hole and took a chunk out of one of my toes… ouch! Oh well… at least I was done! I stumbled out of the surf and up on to the beach towards the flags that marked our finish. I got a big hug from Jane and worked my way back through the crowd of smiling swimmers, paddlers and spectators in search of Dani to go say thank you for being such an allstar paddler on my little adventure. She was very excited that she landed the boat without flipping it like a lot of other people had and at some point she managed to reunite me with my towel.

After drying off and putting pants on I went to the truck to get her all her stuff and then we went back to the beach to watch the rest of the swimmers finish, rehash the swim with my friends and do awards. Everyone wanted to confirm with each other that the swim was as hard as they thought it was, especially the ones that had done it before in 20-30 minute faster times. Jane went bottom to top through the men and women giving out finisher awards and then special awards for top finishers. I got a rad little mug with humpback whales on it :) Since it’s a fairly small event (32 this year and that’s a big turn out) she also said a few words about everybody which I thought was pretty cool. There were lots of really legit swimmers in the mix and a lot that had deep personal and family histories with this swim. When everything was done I went and said my goodbyes to Jane and then worked on a plan to get the kayak back to the boat. I basically had Dani carry all the loose stuff like mesh bags and paddles and I put the kayak on my head and walked it all the way back to the truck… simple yet effective :)

All told it was a really fun swim, a great course and something I would totally do again in a heartbeat. I really need to visit my neighbors to the south a little more to figure out the Santa Barbara swim landscape and add that to my list of places to drop in when I need a change of scenery.

This past weekend in Monterey was quite the oceanic adventure! This was the Westend Wharf Wine and Swim Club’s second attempt at a Santa Cruz to Monterey relay crossing. The good news is we did 50% better than last time! Bad news is that equates to about half the distance of the bay. We ended up having to shut the show down in the morning when it became apparent that we were going to be out there forever (projected 5-7pm which would be up to 22 hours on the water) and the conditions were going to dramatically deteriorate as the day went on. Anyways now that I’ve given away the ending, here’s how the whole thing went down…

Since our last attempt the SoCal contingent grew by one more swimmer. Bekah & Michael came up to my place from Orange County on Friday to hang out and swim, then we drove up together early on Saturday to beat all the holiday traffic that never materialized. We were due to help James load the boat at the Breakwater Cove Marina in Monterey sometime after 1pm, but since we were early we rerouted to Britannia Arms and met James there for some bangers and mash. This has sort of turned into the official boat loading meal of choice for us.

After eating all the bangers and mash that any one person should eat right before getting on a boat, we went over to the marina to meet the boat captain and get things started. Turns out he was stuck in all the traffic we never found and we ended up just hanging out in the parking lot for a while shooting videos and goofing around. Eventually Raj made it through to the marina and we got down to loading up and organizing the boat for our trip. We had extra people to help this time (Michael and Julian who worked on the boat) which made it all way easier than the last time around.

photo by Michael Peck

Once the boat was loaded up we drove up to Ft. Ord to pick up some of our paddlers and our drivers. It was a funny little deja vu kind of reunion… like hey, didn’t we just do exactly this? :) From here we drove up to the Santa Cruz Harbor to meet the rest of the team and support staff for dinner. We needed to fuel ourselves up while we waited for the boat to get there from Monterey. We had fun talking and messing around at the restaurant but you could tell everybody just wanted to get this thing moving. Especially those of us from the south who had been traveling and loading boats all day. We were tired, running out of steam, and needing a little excitement… if I would have had a booth I probably would have covertly laid down for a restaurant nap.

We moved outside after eating and watched the water for our boat. We were joined by Santa Cruz Masters’ Joel and Marta for a little bit and I got to talk to them about Patti B’s recent solo attempt that was cut short by the jellies. We decided as a team to take the most direct route to Del Monte beach instead of trying to go longer and guess our way around where the jellyfish might be since we were probably going to hit them either way. Raj motored that route on the way up and said it was reasonably clean out there except for miles 3-6 from the Santa Cruz shore.

We got everyone else loaded up on the boat and had James and the Captain brief us on certain things about how the relay was going to go. Swimmer transitions, kayaker swaps, and how to pee off a boat… you know, important stuff :) There was a lot of excitement on the boat since this was already way further than we had gotten the last time we tried this. Back in May all we did was have dinner and go to the wine bar, no one ever even got in the water, so this was major progress! This was I believe the 4th time I’d been on this boat and this was going to be the first time I’d ever been on it while moving!

We motored out of the harbor and drove over to Cowell’s Beach where the locals on the team train and where the annual Santa Cruz Rough Water finishes. Our first swimmer, Carter, was on the boat and we had some debate as to what to do with her so that the swim started from the beach like any good large body of water crossing should. Eventually it was decided we drive in as far as we could, she’d swim in, hit the beach, then turn around and start the official swim. When Carter hit the water she was all smiles thanks to some surprisingly warm 62 degree water! It didn’t last through the swim, but it was nice while we had it!

photo by Michael Peck

I spent a lot of the first hours on the boat sitting outside enjoying the view of the lights of the wharf, boardwalk and rogue fireworks being shot off in town. The weather was nice and the water was rolling a bit but fairly smooth with no wind chop. It seemed like it was going to be pretty smooth sailing and the transition between Carter and Timi was nice and quick.

While waiting for my leg, I was 5th, I helped some folks in and out of kayaks and swimmers from the water. The kayaker exchanges were pretty hairy, that’s not an easy thing to do at sea! While getting ready to help Bekah out of the water James stepped up to the edge to jump in and then made a major tactical error… he stepped onto a metal grated platform behind the boat… right into a hole in it! His whole leg went in and it was pretty scary for a second there. It came out showing no signs of blood, but immediately dipping it in cold salt water will do that for you. Once we were sure he was ok we tossed him in the water to tag out Bekah.

photo by Michael Peck

I left the outside deck of the boat to start to get myself together. I already had suits on but had to bodyglide up, get my gps attached to my goggles, cap up, etc. It was a little bit of a blur, but eventually James was inbound for the boat again and it was my turn to jump in. When I hit the water it caught me off guard a bit as to how cold it was. They never really announced the temperature drops during the evening, just that initial 62… probably smart :) I’d imagine this leg was 58ish and I heard we got down to about 56. With a little cold laugh, a big WHOOOOOA BUDDY, and a quick tag of Mr. Nagamine I was off and swimming our relay from Saturday into Sunday!

photo by Michael Peck

I had Chris, my Kelp Krawler buddy who got me hooked into this swim, paddling on my left and Charlie on my right. It took a little bit to get situated and figure out how to stay between them correctly but I think I settled in pretty well in a short period of time. I asked the guys later and they said I was one of the best at not playing kayak pinball out there. Once I really relaxed I could soak in just how beautiful everything was. Everything was black and the only way you could tell the sky from the water was one had a very extensive carpet of stars and the other was full of phosphorescent bubbles. While swimming I started to play my new least favorite game: Sea Grass or Tentacle? Based on the various raised bumps and rashes I had on the boat later I’m going to say it skewed more towards team tentacle.

photo by Michael Peck

There was quite a bit of roll to the water towards the end of my shift. I was a little worried about getting back on the boat with it pitching and rolling in neutral. After watching other swimmers struggle on the boat I made sure to tell people before I got in the water to have a large guy at the ready to get me out since I’m not a small gentleman myself. I was greeted by Carter who is substantially smaller than me, but luckily I managed to get up and out pretty well. I just took it slow and made sure to plant my feet well between each rung of the ladder before moving to the next one. Carter gave me a quick vinegar spray down in the spots where I was stung by jellies and grabbed me a towel. She was a champ. Swam the most legs and was the total boat mom for everybody.

When I had dried myself off my first order of business was to check my GPS to see how far I had gone out there in the dark. According to my Garmin I crested just over a mile. Not great, but not bad for floating around in the dark with a healthy swell and jellyfish attackers. From there I retreated to the galley and changed under my towel back into some pants and a t shirt. At this point I really needed a nap. I’d been up since 6:30am and was fading fast. The bunks up in the front of the boat were all full so I went back to the galley and slept at the table. Bekah was going with the same approach. We passed in and out on top of boxes of cakes and bananas that no one was eating because they were too busy either sleeping or barfing. Sea sickness was hitting a lot of people pretty hard and the whole eating concept wasn’t real popular.

The time between my galley naps and my next swim leg is all a little fuzzy. I remember waking up intermittently to ask people about their swims or duct tape a glow stick on them… and eventually falling victim to the pitch and roll of the boat. Not too long before I was set to swim again I puked my guts out over the side of the boat… hooray :( I tried to fill it back in with some Gatorade since I hadn’t eaten since dinner but that was a no go. I was pretty legitimately worried about swimming my next leg on empty and wondered if I should hop in with something to drink and eat and feed in the water since I’m more comfortable there. While thinking this all out Bekah was regaling her stories of brutal jellyfish warfare. She said she caught upwards of 7 with her face! Yikes! While I was dozing everyone had been shifting over to wetsuits for their swims because the jellies were thickening up. Me being me I had no back up wetsuit… but I did have a face protecting beard and a rash guard and figured that would have to do.

photo by Michael Peck

As I got set to jump in the sky was just starting to grey up from the impending sunrise. It was still dark, but not black. I’d swam like this once before out in the Catalina Channel. It’s a really interesting time to be in the water. James approached the boat, I checked with Benoit that I was good to jump, and tossed myself in the water. Whooooaaaaaaa cold! I tagged James swam a few strokes and picked my head up to catch my breath. The mix of not really sleeping, never really warming up from my first shift, and all that puking put a major dent in my cold tolerance. I got over it, but man that first couple minutes was not a good time!

photo by Michael Peck

I eventually settled down and started swimming what felt like pretty fast. Especially when I hit jellyfish… that speeds me right up! With the minimal amount of light I could see a little bit of what was going on below me… it was jelly city down there. Luckily most were deep enough that they wouldn’t hit me. Those looked like ghost jellies, grey scaled specters of tentacle-y badness. If one came up on me that had discernible colors on it I knew I was in for it… zap! The rash guard was pretty helpful and the beard kept me from getting stung in the face/neck like Bekah did, but my legs were fair game. I did my best to dodge the jellies I could see but that plan only works so well in the dark when they’re everywhere. I swam over one that was particularly big. I didn’t see it but it felt like a monster and a different type than the typical Pacific Sea Nettle I’m used to. It felt like a huge moon jelly or something like that… all globby but not stingy… and seriously like 3 feet across. I popped my head up in the middle of that spewing surprised obscenities that I’m sure entertained my kayak escorts :)

photo by Michael Peck

While we swam we were chasing the boat. I almost caught it twice before it pulled away again, the third time they let me get back on and swap out with Mark. I went a little further on this leg, 1.35 miles, and felt like we must be making really good progress. I went through the same spray down and towel off process assisted by the smiling and omnipresent Carter and then returned to the galley to find my pants which had turned into Timi’s pillow down in the galley.

I really needed to nap and warm up a bit so I went to check the bunk situation and found and open one all the way at the very tip of the boat, score! I went to grab my parka to use as a blanket but it had been commandeered by one of my friends for the same purpose. I’m generally very warm blooded anyways so I just let it be and hopped up in a bunk and worked on crashing out. The boat was really bouncing around up there, but laying on my back it didn’t seem to bother my stomach too much. I was cold though. I blame my feet. I didn’t have anything sufficiently warm for my feet and it all caught up with me right here. I even shivered a bit which isn’t a normal thing for me. Luckily I did sleep though, it was very overdue.

I awoke a little later to talks of team meetings and possibly pulling the plug on the swim. How’s that for a confusing wake up? I got filled in on the deets while working on climbing outside again to the back of the boat. Apparently in the last 10 hours we’d only gone like half way and the captain was guessing we’d hit land at 5-7pm which would be another 10-12 hours on the water. We were all thoroughly perplexed by our lack of forward progress, and nobody was prepared for that kind of time left to swim. We had a boat full of cold, sick swimmers and paddlers along with big ocean swells and conditions that were due to deteriorate in the not to distant future. We all talked it out on deck and shut down the swim. We agreed that we’d had one hell of an adventure but today was not the day. Timi had been in the water for a little bit and we reeled her back in then the captain motored us home to Monterey.

It was disappointing to not make it, but that’s part of the game when you do big open water adventure swims. I’d venture to say less teams make it than don’t in this particular body of water. On the upside we all gained valuable experience to help make the next attempt that much better and came together well as a team. I really like the Westend Wharf Wine & Swim Club and I am really happy to have been invited to come join their merry band of misfits :) Big thanks to everyone that swam, paddled and supported us! Extra big thank yous to James Nagamine who was really the heart of the whole operation. This dream had been burning in his head for a while and him and his friends went out and did something about it. I think that’s awesome and it motivates me to go out and make some of my crazier ideas come to fruition. A solo Monterey Bay crossing has been on my mind for years now, and this trip has really intensified my desire to get that done… I’m going to try to start saving now for a little excursion next year… in the meantime I wouldn’t be surprised if the W3SC didn’t ride again sometime soon and make it shore to shore… it’s gonna happen :)

I just got home from Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake Marathon swim… I had a totally fun weekend. The swim was really interesting, the weather was great, the views were spectacular and we had an awesome group of swimmers there from all over the country. Gords, Josh, and all their helpers did a fantastic job of reviving a really cool and really unique event. I’ll admit I had my doubts about doing a big swim in the Great Salt Lake, but now that I’ve done it I’m sold! Turns out Utah can be a pretty rad place to go open water swimming, who knew?

I camped out Friday night at the marina with Gords and his son Jacob (who was paddling) so I had a pretty pressure free commute to deal with that morning :) I took all my bags to the curb and started sorting my stuff out so that my B70 backpack would have all my necessary swim gear in it and all my other junk would be in my duffel bag and another bag I packed just to hold stuff while I was swimming since the backpack doubled as my carry on for my flights. A guy who I think has something to do with the local sailing club talked to me out there for a while about the area. Showed me how to see where the levels the lake used to be on the mountains and explained that the big smoke stack behind the marina was part of a copper plant. He said I was welcome to come out and sail with him in the lake in the afternoon if I wanted, but I was pretty sure I’d be all Salt Laked out by then :)

While it was still quiet I walked to the water’s edge and watched the lake move for a little while. The good news was the lake looked beautiful underneath the rising sun and ringed in snow capped mountains. The bad news was that fantastically favorable current from the night before was nowhere to be seen. The wind was still light, but it was all going the wrong direction. Instead of pushing roughly Southwest towards the finish at Black Rock it was pushing more East towards the shore. Hmmm… this could be exciting depending on how much more wind the afternoon brought.

After a little while some of the other swimmers, paddlers and volunteers started showing up. I met up with Josh and Goody first, John from New York came around not too long after. There’s a little observation point at the tip of the parking lot with great views of the lake so I made sure to stop all of them and do quick video interviews. Hopefully bits and pieces of them pop up in a USMS video sometime in the near future :) Slowly but surely the crowd kept filling in. Once everyone was present and accounted for Gords gave us a quick run down on the history of the race and how things were going to go for us today.

The first part of getting this swim on the road was literally getting on the road… for like 2 hours. Antelope Island isn’t particularly easily accessed so we had to make a big drive to get out there. We had 6 swimmers in our van (Suzie, Sylvia, Goody, Greg, John, and me), and we managed to pass the time pretty easily joking around and talking about this race and other swims we’d done or were thinking about. When we got far enough to actually enter the park there were signs warning us about biting gnats out on the island… that sounded pretty charming and exciting to people with plans of stripping down to swimsuits and standing around for a while. As we pushed deeper into the park the road gave way to dirt paths and we off road adventured for a while. The view out there was awesome and we even saw some antelopes (imagine that right? haha) and bison hanging out.

At the end of the road there was a group of folks standing around looking like beekeepers with these nets over their heads to protect their faces. Heh… oh boy… apparently the sign we saw like half an hour ago wasn’t kidding! All the swimmers bailed out of the van and we used bigger rocks as makeshift get ready areas. We had to sort out our swim gear, cap and goggle up, and do some serious swim lubing. I used an egregious amount of Bag Balm because I had no desire to chafe mean salty holes in myself today. I gooped it all over my neck, the tops of my shoulders, under my arms, and down yonder in the danger zone. After that I put some sunscreen on my dome to avoid getting a sweet altitudinally charged cap line around my bald head. The only thing that I couldn’t really do any preventative maintenance with was my mouth. I knew that salt water was going to jack my tongue up and there wasn’t a whole lot to do about it. Once I was good to go I threw on another rubber glove to help Greg get full sunscreen coverage on his back.

From here I marched down to the beach barefoot which probably wasn’t the right answer. There was no real trail and you had to forge your own. I kept stepping on really prickly little plants and rocks… luckily I spend most of my life barefoot so my feet were tough enough to deal with it without incident. En route I noticed all kinds of things were trying to bite me. Some were successful, but a lot of the gnats and mosquitoes had made the mistake of going for my shiny spots that were covered in swim lubricants. They got stuck and died… take that jerks! Try to bite me will ya :p Down on the sand it was really muddy and gushy. Your feet sank right in and that mud stuck on you really well. While out there I made the command decision to take my GPS out of my cap. Although I wanted exact data from on my person it already wasn’t comfortable. The race cap was brand new and plenty tight and just pressing it straight through my noggin. Instead at the water’s edge I hit start and gave it to Gords to keep in the kayak. So the first half mile of the map is actually me walking in the water, but I moved all that distance under my own power… I just happened to be standing for part of it.

The plan for starting the race to do it in water at about waist level. Turns out we had to take a pretty epic walk to get there! We got all the kayaks out far enough to float and then started to shuffle out. The bottom continued to be really smooshy for about 200m and then hardened up enough to be easier to walk on. All the swimmers and kayakers got a chance to talk and laugh at how weird this swim was. I assure you there is no other swim like it :) Everyone was smiling and in a pretty good mood and wondering when the water would actually you know… get deeper. I was particularly concerned with this because I kinda needed to pee, haha.

Slowly the water got deeper but not by much. Eventually Gords called it and determined that we had found our starting point. By the time we stopped we must have been half a mile off shore. We lined up and ran through a countdown from 15 together.

We were all massed together for a little bit with the kayaks lining the outsides. I used the big smoke stack at the copper plant as my guide while waiting to meetup with Gords in the kayak. After a few minutes the pack started separating. I saw Will and Greg break away, John peel off to the right, and there were one or two mystery swimmers (Joe and Jason I think) that took a line more towards the left that I never got a good look at because I don’t breath on that side. I had a drafter early on… it was Goody… he joked that this would happen, and well there he was :) Once he realized he was all up in my business he pulled to the side a bit and swam on my left instead.

The first part of the swim remained really shallow, I even hit the bottom once maybe half a mile into it. The water was pretty lumpy from the beginning. Lots of chop that wasn’t really going the way we wanted it to. It was a struggle to take a breath and not get some of that super salty water inside. My shoulders were feeling pretty crappy and I was wishing for colder water to help me not feel them… I was missing my frosty Pacific Ocean’s analgesic properties for sure. All that aside I mainly spent a lot of time just dealing with the salt. My mouth was all swollen and not good feeling pretty early on. My lips felt like they were going to split apart! Luckily that never happened, but it felt imminent! I felt like I was in dire need of chap stick or something but there wasn’t any to be had and I just had to suck it up, plus no idea if that would have even actually helped.

At the first feed it was my chance to see what was going on behind me. Best I could tell at this point I was right in the middle of the swimmers in the water. I had Goody and Christine right behind me, and Suzie, Sylvia, John and Scott were spread out behind them. Goody and Christine passed me while I was eating but I caught up shortly thereafter. The same thing happened on feed number two, but after number three my shoulders had warmed up, I found my pace, and I pulled away. As a swimmer I pretty much never saw anyone again although Gords had a pretty good view of the world from up in the kayak. Gords isn’t a big talker but was really good at letting me know what was up quickly while I was feeding. I like to stay on top of distance covered, time in the water, and stuff like that while swimming and he kept me in the loop.

After about 2 hours I started taking mouthwash with feeds to mellow out the salt. It was borderline magical. The alcohol sort of burned that salt action off my tongue and gave me a brief reprieve. It’s hard to explain the sensation of that water’s saltiness… Sylvia likened it to licking the inside of a Pringles can. I think it’s more like if you’ve ever dissolved a sugar cube in your mouth, but instead of sugar it was salt… eww. I was drinking and eating at every stop. Normally I don’t eat that much, but I just needed something in my mouth to temporarily scrub out the lake. The Gu Chomps were especially awesome because they left a residue on my tongue that gave me a welcomed relief and a better flavor to focus on temporarily.

Over time the water laid down a little bit and I could feel my progress pick up. I could really start to stretch my stroke out now that I didn’t have to modify it as much just to breath. That current never really went away though. I knew I was getting pushed around because the lake is so shallow that I could see the bottom moving underneath me for a lot of the swim. I could also tell just by the way Gords was paddling. He basically went outrigger canoe style for like 6 of 8 miles by just paddling on the left side of the boat. He had one hand just under the right blade of the paddle and kept pulling left to avoid getting pushed into me.

As we started to push into that 6-7 mile range I started to have sneezing fits. The salt had basically burnt all the snot out of my face and the tickle off the water in there kept triggering off sneezes. I worked on timing the sneezed to happen between breaths while my face was under water. It probably looked ridiculous from above… or like I was yaking. I made sure to let Gords know that I was just sneezing a lot, not puking my brains out down there.

I was really encouraged when we got to a point where I at least felt like I was in line with the marina and we were passing the big smoke stack. The water was a little busier out here though. There was a sailing event going on and plenty of boats were out doing their thing. At one point I had to stop because we were cut off by a sailboat! They were just motoring back, not even sailing, and crossed right in front of us. I saw this mast growing over the top of the kayak and eventually stopped and asked Gords “so they’re really going to do that huh?” and they did. Only upside is that I got to sneak in a bonus feed since I was just sitting around anyways.

At this point I could actually see Black Rock while swimming and it was a big tease. I knew it would be, but living through it sucked. I hate the last mile or two of long swims… I need to learn to not look so much. Gords told me that depending on how our lines converged I was going to be pretty close to either Jason or Joe. I couldn’t see them, but just the though of it lit a little bit of a fire under my ass and I tried to pick it up a bit. After 4 hours in the water I’m sure from above it didn’t look any different, but at least I felt like I was trying harder :)

As we neared the rock we took a line that was dead on the rock itself, but a little off of where the tiny beach that housed the finish was. We did a little dog leg around the corner to hit the finish. I could hear a little bit of yelling and clapping coming from the shore… I was so stoked to almost be done. Based on earlier conversations I was expecting a bit of a walk/run to the beach, but it stayed just deep enough for me to swim it all the way in. I stumbled around for a while trying to get my act back together on dry land and in the midst of all this I had a finisher’s medal tossed over my head, yay! I kinda forgot it was there though and still had it on way later when I checked into my hotel :) I ended up finishing at 4 hours and 23 minutes putting me 5th overall, right behind Joe and a little ways in front of Goody. Will Reeves, the oldest guy in the race, gave us all a beat down coming in at a smoking fast 3:41. You can see all the results at www.greatsaltlakeopenwater.com.

After my swim I put some shorts and sandals on, reapplied sunscreen, and watched everyone else finish. It was great to watch the other swimmers hit the finish, smile and stumble out. There’s something about finishing a long point to point swim that is supremely satisfying. Once everyone was done we took some pictures, rehashed the swim a bit, compared tongues and then started to scatter from the beach.

I caught a ride with Cathi to my hotel while the others took vans back to their cars at the marina. I checked in looking a total mess… beard all full of salt and bag balm, a little sun burnt, swollen puffy tongue, and wearing a medal… the kid behind the counter had no idea why I looked like this and just smiled and gave me my room keys. After being a fancy Marriott Gold Elite member for a long time I finally scored a big upgrade! I got a 2 room suite, super rad timing. After unpacking a little, my first order of business was washing the lake off me. First a shower and then a bath. Luckily the race bag came with samples of swimmer shampoo so I could wash all the salt and bag balm out of my beard… it was pretty gross, but the adventure beard did it’s job… no chaffing! Later in the evening I went out with the same crew as Friday night for some Vietnamese food in downtown SLC that was fantastically good. I may have also ordered a pizza a little later in the evening just to top off my stomach… don’t judge, it was a long day and I’m a growing boy! :p

Now that I’m home reflecting on the whole thing I’m just really stoked with how it all went down. It had everything I like… unique venue, point to point course, and a bunch of really fun people to share it with. The open water community is full of so many nice people that are total characters and I totally love it. I’m really glad I decided to come out and do this swim and be a part of Utah Open Water history and the resurgence of such a historically rich swim! I really want to thank all the volunteers and paddlers for making the whole thing possible. And I really want to thank Gords for turning me onto the swim, paddling for me, taking pictures and video from the boat, giving me a place to sleep, arranging rides, and everything else. I really owe that guy one for helping me have such a good time in the race! I hope the swim continues to go on and become successful, and maybe I can come back out again sometime in the future and take on the Great Salt Lake one more time… it’s definitely going on the repeat list… just as soon as I finish peeling my tongue from this swim :p