I know I keep saying it this week, but wow!!! What a crazy swim!!! This morning I woke up early and walked in the rain to Aquatic Park to meet up with about 9 other swimmers to go do a big swim from the Golden Gate bridge back to the park with Leslie from Swim-Art. We had some Californians, New Yorkers, Vermonters, an Oregonian and an Illinoisan in the mix. While walking around looking for other swimmers Bob from Oregon yelled out his car window at me to let me know I could hop in his vehicle to stay dry for a little bit. I’ve been friends with Bob on Facebook for a while but this was the first time we’ve met in person… sometimes it’s nice being easily recognizable even in the dark with a hooded parka on :)
Eventually everybody else got there and we gathered up and started talking about the swim. Pretty much everybody was apprehensive about the temperatures because they hadn’t been in open water much since Fall. As the sun started to come up Leslie gave us a briefing and warned us that since the tsunami the water has been a little weird and we might be in for a challenging swim. Fully briefed we walked back across the park, made a pit stop at the South End to prepay our day use fee and drop our bags, and then walked to the zodiacs which were our ride to the bridge.
The ride out started flat but once we came around the breakwater and got up to speed it livened up a bit! We were crashing down on the bigger swells as we neared the bridge. Since the water was so stirred up outside the bridge the plan was to drop us about mid span on the inside. We had to do circles for a while before launching though since the kayakers had to fight their way out there to meet us.
Once it was go time Leslie counted down from 10 and we all spilled over the sides of our boats into the low 50′s water. I was paired up in a pod with my friend Amanda (who was sporting a Rob Aquatics suit today!) and I held by her side as she worked on getting comfortable in the water. As this was going on we got sucked into a weird whirlpool type thing! This has never happened to me before. Amanda and I were getting pulled in a circle while really unfriendly chop cracked us repeatedly in the head. She ended up throwing a hand up because she was stuck and frankly it was kinda scary. The zodiac scooped her up and I powered my way out of it with the kayaker who was trying really hard not to hit me with his boat as the water swung him around as well! They dropped Amanda back in the water a little later so she still got to do some swimming after our little whirlpool surprise.
I tried to get back to work and find a rhythm but it was hard with water being so amazingly rough. The chop was really unpredictable and even though we were riding a big flood tide it didn’t feel like it because you were getting all this cross chop blow in from the city. Our route was to basically aim for the first tower of the Bay Bridge then start cutting in when you saw the warehouses at Fort Mason. I stopped every once and a while to ask the kayaker if I was on course because it was so hard to see anything with the water being so active. He gave me an alternative sighting target up on the hill that was easier to follow.
I slogged along and best I can tell kept an ok line… well best one could considering all the pushing and pulling the water was doing. After the swim other guys talked about hitting over aerated spots that were almost impossible to swim in, and finding other small eddies that wanted to twist them around!
As we neared Aquatic Park the kayaker aimed me to the right of the TransAmerica Pyramid and I had to fight to stay there… now that I was perpendicular to it I could feel that flood tide! I swam right at the middle of the seawall on the right hand side of the entrance to Aquatic Park to make sure I made the opening, I really didn’t want to have to swim around the back door! Once I made it in I could finally relax a bit, but the current was still pushing inside the park. I thanked the kayaker tasked with watching me and swam it the rest of the way into the South End Rowing Club. At the beach I took a deep breath, looked back at the bridge, smiled a little and then concerned myself with finding a shower.
I found a bunch of the guys up there and we recounted our personal versions of the adventure and then took over the sauna for a bit. I had to bail a little early since I had plans to go visit FINIS in the east bay this afternoon. I ran back to the hotel, packed, changed and hit the road. On the way there the weather really opened up in a bad way, it was some scary driving!
Over at FINIS I met up with my friend Sarah in the marketing department and she gave me the grand tour of the showroom, warehouse, etc. We talked shop for a little while and I got to see some stuff that’s been coming out recently that all looks pretty cool! I also picked up some new toys to try out in the pool when I get home from the open water conference… speaking of the open water safety conference, I’m there right now! I need to go mingle and meet everybody! Hopefully I come away with some good stuff to share with you from tomorrow’s excitement!
Today started with a wake up waaaay to early for me… 4:45… in the morning! Ack! It was for a good reason though, I had to be in Santa Maria at my pool workout buddy Mike’s house early to catch a ride down to Pasadena for the Cal Tech Pentathlon. Admittedly I’m not in pool sprinter shape at the moment, but this is my third year in a row going to this meet and it’s hard to miss… it’s just fun! A 50 of each stroke and a 100 IM, great way to take a reading on how your strokes are doing across the board.
Mike and I left Santa Maria around 6 and jammed down the 101 towards SoCal with no traffic anywhere. Thanks to everyone still being asleep we managed to beat mapquest’s directions by 30 minutes, score! Even though we were half an hour early for warm up there were a few folks on the deck moving about… including a few of my favorites, Pat and Kathleen from Rosebowl. They let us set our stuff up by their tent so we’d have some shade for the day.
warm up in full swing
Since the competition pool gets pretty crazy during warm up I made sure to get in right away when it opened so I could take my time and feel out the edges. I’ve had issues finding the walls here before so I figured this was good plan. I got in about 200 yards with a lane all to myself and then things started filling in. After 300 or 400 yards I hopped out with plans to get back wet again in the warm up pool when it got closer to my first event. In the mean time I found the contingent of swimmers from my team that were there for the day and tracked down a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in months!
The first event of the day was my best event on the schedule, the 50 fly. Even with my sandbagged time I landed in the 2nd to last heat of the event. A couple heats earlier my buddy Mike swam a 27 something so I figured I had to catch that because if I was going to beat him in anything this was my big chance. I felt like I got a really solid start and my dolphin kicking was good. I was alright through the turn, but on the second half I didn’t really feel like my stroke was connecting as well as it could have. I ended up taking one more stroke than I probably should have at the finish, but at least I landed in the 27′s. Later on I figured out that Mike and I tied with exactly a 27.40, crazy… so close to beating him just once…
back half of my 50 fly
Next up was the 50 back, I suck at the 50 back. My underwater kicking off each wall was fine, but the swimming part in the middle… not so much. I swam a 34.2 which is a lot slower than the last 2 years, and didn’t even catch my sandbagged time… that needs some work.
My 50 breast was kind of fun because I had my friend Clive on one side of me and my friend Patrick on the other. Patrick’s wife videoed the race and you can see how it all went below…
In the 50 free Mike and I made up the same exact time and ended up in the same heat directly next to each other. I left my camera with my teammate Becky to grab some video for me. I think I had a pretty strong start, but I made a big mistake on the breakout. I pulled my arm out way to deep and slowed myself down a lot getting to the surface. We turned even with each other, and I knew that would set Mike’s competitive nature in motion. From there he turned the legs on and pulled away from me beating me by a stroke.
We finished the day with the 100 IM… the good news is I finished right around my sandbagged time, that’s also the bad news! I added 6 seconds onto my best time and apparently I needed all of them! I knew I was in trouble when I wasn’t out front during the 25 fly… it was all downhill from there. At the finish I was huffing and puffing pretty hard. Funny thing is I feel better after a 3 mile ocean swim than I do after a fast 100. My friend Pat was in my heat so I have some video for this as well, I kind of fall out of frame through part of it by virtue of not being fast enough to stay in it :)
Once the meet was done I got dressed and said my goodbyes to everybody before Mike and I got back on the road. We stopped for lunch before leaving Pasadena and I inhaled mine! A steak, mashed potatoes, a couple glasses of water and a beer… recovery meal of champions right? By 7pm, 13 1/2 hours after leaving the house, I was home. It was a long day but a good trip. I’m not sure what my next meet will be, but I’m sure I’ll be back in the race pool shortly!
I’ve wanted to conquer this stretch of ocean for such a long time and I am very happy to report I made the whole swim! I think it’s fair to say that today’s outing was a very legit open water ocean swim… a 10k that turned into 11k in 53 degree water with no wetsuit that ended up running 4 hours because I had to fight the ocean the whole way… there was no free ride today, I earned this one! This isn’t my longest swim ever but it’s definitely in the running for the hardest! It’s also not the coldest Polar Bear swim in the country, but I’m pretty sure it was the only marathon open water swim going on today!
My day started really early, like way earlier than it needed too. I managed to fall asleep at right about midnight with intentions of waking up at 5am. Instead I was up pacing the house by 3:45. On top of just being anxious to go out and swim my body was in pre-heat mode. I was sweating buckets in bed, apparently my body knew what to expect today and turned up the heat! I spent a few hours fidgeting with my bags for today (one for the start in Avila and another for the finish in Pismo), and messing around on Facebook and Twitter hoping to take my mind off of things. Around 6:30am I hopped in the truck and drove to Port San Luis. The sun still wasn’t up but you could see that the ocean was looking reasonably calm so far. I was just stoked it wasn’t raining! I was however pretty worried about what kind of weather was hiding behind the mountains.
Niel, Dave VM, and I pre swim in the Port
I parked at the water’s edge in the port and Niel pulled in right beside me just a moment later, as we were saying good morning I got a text from Captain Mike of the Seaweed Express who was going to be driving the Zodiac to let me know he was there too and getting his boat set up. While Niel was getting his kayak prepped Chris from LiveSwim.net showed up with all his gear to do an experimental livestream and Dave Van Mouwerik wasn’t too far behind him. So far so good. All my guys were on time and accounted for and it wasn’t raining, my confidence was rising. While everyone was getting set we had one more guy join us at the Port, Chip. I’ve only had the chance to swim with him once before and he’s a pretty cool guy.
Seaweed Express boat en route to load up Chris and Niel's Kayak
About 10 minutes to 8 the guys took off in the boat towing the kayak to the Avila Pier and I hopped in Dave’s car so that I could start from the beach… only one problem with that… the car didn’t start! Luckily Chip was still in the parking lot and I’m not one to freak out when little things go wrong. We laughed it off and hopped in Chip’s car to make way to downtown Avila. I was greeted there by my parents and group of my open water swim friends. It was a really cool way to start the whole swim with my friends and family there supporting my adventure… as an added bonus I think that this was the first time my folks have seen me swim in person since I came back to the sport via masters swimming. I stripped down and greased up on the sidewalk and then walked down to the Port side of the Avila pier. Once I saw the zodiac boat in range I gave my mom a hug and then started my walk into the water.
walking in to get things started!
It wasn’t too warm, surprise right? At least the air temp was probably a balmy 47 about then :) I don’t think the air temp ever got much past 52 today. Once I had waded in to my stomach I decided to dive through a wave and just go for it. I swam up the face of a few inbound waves like I would normally have to, but they just kept coming! This was probably the hardest I’ve ever worked just to get to the end of this pier, yikes. I was a little worried that the rest of the day was going to be like this (surprise! it was), but I decided it didn’t matter what the ocean threw at me I wasn’t getting out until I hit Pismo.
swimming to the end of the Avila pier
I met up first with the zodiac and then Niel came up from behind in the kayak. Much like myself, he was getting tossed all over the place. Basically we had 2 things working against us today. One, big swells were coming from the southwest pushing me back towards Avila. Two, winds were blowing from the south east building chop on top of the rollers. Fun right? I got a lot of face fulls of water instead of air while trying to breathe on this swim!
this breath looks like it's going to be more water than air...
leaving Avila Beach for opener ocean
The swim down through Avila and out to Bird Rock seemed to go really quickly for me. Actually getting past Bird Rock was a little unpleasant though. The water was pretty dirty all around it and I had to adjust course to push out even further as I passed it to keep out of the muck. I didn’t want dirt and bird poo in my beard for the next hour!
swimming past Bird Rock... I'll give you one guess as to what that white stuff on it is... ewwww
Not too far past this is where I took my only “solid” feed of some GU. My stomach was a little out of sorts the whole trip and I decided to just stick to liquids the rest of the day. For liquids I was just drinking regular purple Gatorade. I don’t take hot feeds even in cold water, it’s not really for me. Our feeds were a little tricky though because as soon as Niel would stop paddling the swell would push him away from me back towards Avila. Actually getting the bottle from the boat into my hands wasn’t particularly easy to get accomplished, plus I couldn’t egg beater kick too much because I was cramping in my right upper thigh and really didn’t want to make that lock down.
Niel giving me my bottle... we stopped to feed every 25-30 minutes
We spent a long time swimming along Shell Beach crawling over the occasional stalks of kelp and other excitement. Shell Beach in and of itself is a pretty small place, just a thin strip of homes along the coast but it’s long and I was looking at those cliffs for a pretty long time… well I tried to look at them anyways. I mainly breathe right so I was looking out towards Japan most of the time. I would try occasionally breathe to the left or sight forwards and that was largely a bust because the water around me was always too tall to actually see anything over it. The photos really don’t do justice to the textural mess I was in… once I have some video in hand I think that’ll give you guys a better idea of what was going on out there.
those cliffs are a major reason why this swim is tricky... no way out of the water for a few miles
Somewhere in the middle of Shell Beach while stopped for a feed Chris informed me that my coach, Nancy from CVMM, had been watching the livestream and text messaging him! She wanted to let me know she was watching and I was looking good.
Pismo Pier in sight
After a while I started getting a little frustrated that I hadn’t seen the Pismo Pier yet. I knew it was out there but I couldn’t see it through the chop. To add to the fun the rain finally hit us. Not too big a deal to me at this point but the rest of my crew didn’t seem to be too excited about it. It did seem to make the chop lay down at least temporarily though which was nice for me. While stopped for a feed I was finally picked up by a swell enough to see the pier… almost there… awesome. I knew it was that “it looks close but it isn’t” kind of close, but visual confirmation that I had at least entered the right zip code was good enough for me.
Niel paddling with me to the pier while friends and family watch from above!
We turned in a little bit and started to aim for the top of the pier. As we got closer I could actually see where we were going thanks to the Christmas tree decoration at the tip of the pier. The one thing that wasn’t going so well was we were now moving just about parallel to the swell and Niel’s kayak kept getting tossed at me. I tried to keep my distance but the water was really unpredictable and we ended up a lot closer to each other than we probably wanted to be quite a few times.
With maybe 500m left to go before the pier I took one last feed. I needed it because I was started to cramp in my arms and pecs. Unfortunately about 30 seconds after I started to swim again I also started throwing up. I yakked 3 times in a row pretty hard. I’ve never done that on a swim before. I’m blaming the sea water I kept swallowing by accident. I stopped briefly to recompose myself and then went back to swimming. Luckily the desire to throw up didn’t return!
Dave VM's view of us en route to Pismo from the top of the pier
At the tip of the pier my I took leave of my boat escorts because they couldn’t come in any further due to the waves breaking out there. I said a quick thank you to Niel for being such a champ about kayaking in the cold, wind and rain then turned towards the beach. I could hear my friends up top yelling down at me… totally awesome way to finish a swim :) I picked up the pace to about the middle of the pier and then hit water shallow enough to just stand up in. My swim buddy Jason who is also a beach lifeguard was there with his truck waiting for me. He flashed the lights and gave me a little shot of the siren as I crossed onto the sand. I was done. What a ride!
victory!
Celebrating with Jason who was doing his best to make sure I was ok after my swim
Jason put the tailgate on the truck down to give me somewhere to sit and tossed me a jacket. A lady on the beach who said she’d been watching me swim since Shell Beach loaned me a towel to dry off a little. As the whole experience was sinking in a whole parade of friends and family came down the beach from the pier to congratulate me and ask me about the swim. I had kind of a hard time getting the words out, my face was pretty frozen. Maybe 5 minutes after getting out I broke into a shiver. I never shiver so this was pretty weird for me, but I figure 4 hours in 53 degree water is kinda supposed to do that to you. I towel changed into dry clothes and hung out for as long as I could stand it, but after not too long I had to roll. My girlfriend drove me home and I tossed myself in the shower for a while to warm up. I still shivered a bit for another 15 minutes or so but once I shook it off I was good to go. I feel totally fine now besides some chaffing on my right side and some tight muscles.
bundled up post swim on the beach with my folks
A write up of any swim like this wouldn’t be complete without some major thank yous!!! First and foremost a huge thank you to Niel. He’s been a great training partner and volunteered to kayak this swim without hesitation. It must have been totally miserable up on the water and he didn’t complain and kept me on a straight line all the way down the coast. I don’t even know how I’m going to repay this favor… but I am hugely appreciative and grateful to have him on my side! Captain Mike and the Seaweed Express rocked as my zodiac boat back up. They were fun, on time, on task and accommodating of my fairly out of the ordinary New Year’s Day boat charter. I’m also really thankful Chris from LiveSwim managed to make it up for the swim. He streamed video from the front of the zodiac almost the whole time (had to cut it for a while due to rain and laptops not mixing well), and shot a lot of the pictures in this post. He’s been really supportive of what I do here on Rob Aquatics for a long time now and I’m glad the both of us continue to find ways to work together on exciting projects and experiments! I also want to thank my local swim friends from the Santa Maria Masters and the Avila Dolphins for swimming with me and supporting me in my crazy adventures. I had pool swim friends waiting for me on the beach and open water friends cheering for me from on the pier… it was totally great and the support means a whole lot to me. Having experienced guys from that crowd like Dave VM(he actually ran this as a sanctioned Masters summer time race a long time ago) calling me up on the phone in the lead up to the swim offering any help they can really helped take some of the pressure off me to figure everything out. Beyond that major thank yous to those of you that donated money to the fundraising portion of my swim. Local businesses really stepped up with donations and swim friends and readers from SLO County and places as far away as Chicago and New York also pitched in along with folks who read about my swim in Friday’s paper. I’m going to leave the donation button up on the website a couple more days in case anybody still wants to toss in a few bucks.
the Seaweed Express Boat!
Niel dripping wet from manning the kayak in rain, wind, chop and big swells
the liveswim view from the bow of the boat!
Now that this adventure is done and I’ve finally done the swim I’ve been wanting for so long it’s time to take a day and enjoy it… then start to find the next one!
even when I'm slow Mark Savage makes me look fast! (http://www.marksavage.com/)
So I had a busy weekend… two turkey-tastic meets and 500 miles of driving! I started on Saturday with the Gobbler Classic meet in San Luis Obispo which is only about 15 minutes from my house. This was mainly a USA-S meet but they had masters heats mixed in between the kids stuff. There were 3 days of action planned but I was only able to get in half a day of it… well I could have swam a distance event Friday night, but it was raining after work and I decided watching the National Geographic Channel while eating Thai food on my couch was a better deal than standing in the rain in the dark only to have to swim a 1650 :)
I got to the pool a little early on Saturday because I needed to deck enter my events. Since I had dinner plans in Orange County that night I was only going to be able to hang around until like noon so I picked the first 3 masters events thinking they’d all be done before I needed to split. After getting entered I set my chair up and shortly thereafter someone set a tent up over the top of it. This worked out pretty well for me because it started raining not too long after that, luckily the rain wasn’t a sustained phenomenon. Despite forecasts of rain all weekend I never really saw any besides that little bit in the morning.
While hanging out on deck I ran into a bunch of the SLO Masters Meet regulars. Not too many of us old folks come out for this meet with the kiddos so you start to recognize a lot of faces. I got in a little warm up and chatted up some people while waiting for my first event, the 100 breaststroke.
contemplating just how bad I am at sprinting right now :)
When it was time for the masters events there was a little confusion with the timers because they didn’t have cards for us. I guess we were being run separate and they didn’t know what was up yet since this was the first time through for all of them. I asked the people behind my lane if they had me up next just to make sure I was in the right spot. The guy said “unless you’re 6 years old you’re not on my list.” Heh, whoops. So they decided to improvise and write my name and event down on the card he had for the next event. My newest Splish suit came in handy since it had my last name written on the front which beats having to spell it out for somebody! After getting my name and everything down he said “so you’re what about 16?” I thought that was pretty funny, I let him know he only missed by a little bit.
The actual race was less amusing. I accidentally entered my SCM time for this SCY race and well it’s pretty good I did because I only missed my SCM time by 1 second… my real life SCY time from April however was about 9 seconds faster! Even when you do a little handicapping for a drag suit versus a b70 bodysuit it was still pretty ugly. I swam a 1:18 and was huffing and puffing at the end… still stuck in long distance ocean gear… it’s going to take some work to knock that loose!
even my backpack was mocking me!
Based on the time things were taking I was only going to get in one more race, the 50 fly. I figured this should go a little better since I’m relatively decent at it and a lot of the time I’ll win it overall at the SLO meets. This race was a little more of the same. I was about 2 seconds and change slower than my best time on this one… yikes. At least I was under 30 seconds, I might have had to retire from 50′s if it had been much slower! I came in around 28 high and second overall in the men’s heat.
Once I got out of the pool I dried off and packed up my stuff into the truck. I did a quick deck change in the parking lot into some regular person clothes and made a beeline for Long Beach. When I got there to check into the room I reserved during the week I found out my reservation didn’t actually go through… uh oh! Luckily I’m a super fancy gold elite member and this was sorted out in a rapid fashion… I’m just glad they had rooms! I dropped my stuff off and then ran off into the night with my friends Merritt and Bekah (who are both way better swimmers than me) to hang out. Although staying up until 3am drinking beers isn’t really the best way to prep for a second day of racing I still think it was the right answer, I had a lot of fun.
As one would imagine waking up the next morning didn’t go as planned. I slept through my alarm and woke up about an hour later than planned. Oh well. I got myself ready, packed my stuff and drove back up towards Woodland Hills for the Turkey Shoot SCM meet at Pierce College. I missed my first event but got there in time for the other 3 and a relay. Showing up at the meet was really nice for me because it was a little parade of hugs and handshakes from all kinds of people I haven’t seen in a really long time. I had friends and teammates all over the place. In the midst of all my travel this year I haven’t been to a Southern California pool meet since May! Luckily I’m only a couple weeks out from my next one which should be way more heavily attended with even more of my SoCal friends, along with a bunch of folks from out of town.
random action!
I started my racing off with the 100m fly today. I haven’t swam that race in pretty much forever. Last year I swam my worst time of the season at this meet, 1:11. Well I topped it today, I swam around 1:12. I didn’t feel too bad swimming this, I just didn’t feel that fast. My walls have deteriorated quite a bit. I need to get back to work on my dolphin kicking. The upside is my friend and celebrity photographer Mark Savage from SCAQ was out and took some pictures that make me look like I was tearing that place up! Check out the beard… it’s out of control!
beware the fierce beard of doom! (photo by Mark Savage)
My next 2 events were breaststroke, the 50 and the 100. In the 50 I swam about a second slower than I did up in Walnut Creek in October. My friend Kathleen caught some video of the 50m breast so you can see how things went.
I felt like I was shortening up my stroke way too much in the 50m and made sure to relax a lot more in my 100m breast. I may have relaxed a bit too much… I swam a 1:28 which can’t be good. I’d say I need to leave the breaststroking alone for a while… unfortunately I already signed up for it at the Belmont Meet in Long Beach in early December… whoops :)
standing around before my 100m breast while some technical issues were resolved by the meet staff
I finished up my day with the 400 medley relay and this was a ton of fun. My team had enough people in the right mix to do 2 relays today and I was the random young person on the A team. I think we were one year shy of making it into the 240+ age group, my 29 year old-ness totally screwed up the average :) I got to swim the 100m fly one more time, and everyone on our team did a good job and had fun. I’m stoked I made it out today to do this.
the end of my 100m fly in the 400m medley relay
After the meet I went to lunch with my Coach and caught up for a couple hours before I had to finish driving home. Now that I’ve got a handful of pool races taken care of I think I can start to convince my body that it’s ok to go fast for short periods of time again. Hopefully at Belmont I can knock out one or two fast swims!
Looking for a cold water adventure to extend your open water season into November? This is it dude! With an air temperature that wasn’t quite 50 degrees and water temps hovering around 54-55 it was a special kind of cold that I hadn’t experienced before. I’ve swam in much colder water without a wetsuit, but the effect of piling cold air on top of things really makes a big difference! Although this is pretty crazy to most people, it was excellent experience for me and some of the things I have percolating in the back of my head for sometime in the future.
early am at Coney Island
My whirlwind cold water NYC adventure started Friday night in San Luis Obispo. I hopped a plane to LAX and then a red eye to JFK. I landed a little after 7am having gotten not much sleep and hurried out to the street to hop in open water marathon man Dave Barra’s car. He was cool enough to come pick me up and drive me out to the swim which saved me a huge amount of city-I’ve-never-been-to stress. We got to Coney Island and the NY Aquarium way early and hung out in the room they had set aside for event participants. Since we had a while I tried to partake in a mix of socializing, helping here and there with set up (at one point I was pushing a generator on a dolly down the Boardwalk!), and attempting to take a mini nap. Somewhere in the middle of all of that I made a trip down to the water to dunk my feet and formally introduce myself to the Atlantic Ocean. That water burned pretty good… I guessed we were a solid 55 degrees which matched what was announced later in the day. While moving about I finally got to meet some swimmers that I had been wanting to meet in person. Suzie Dods was there (and ran the NYC marathon on Sunday!)… funny we both live in California and would meet for the first time in New York. And I met Mo Siegal as well who just did the Ederle swim amongst a big list of other huge swims this summer.
the Atlantic Ocean... we meet at last
At 10:30 we got a pre-race briefing on the course and safety. Once it got closer to 11 we marched on out to the water. The good news is it was sunny, the bad news is it was still cold outside. Down by the start I decided to just embrace it. I stripped down to my suit and BodyGlided myself up and chatted with the other swimmers. I think we had upwards of 50-60 people participating and a good majority of them were going skins although there were wetsuits in the mix.
marching towards our frosty piece of ocean for the day
They lined us up on the beach and did a bit of a countdown to the start. As one would expect there was a little rush to the water and then most of us slowed down considerably as that water started hitting a little higher! I took my sweet time getting in as I am prone to do with cold water. I eased in and let the small waves get me wetter as I waded deeper. By the time I pushed off and started swimming for real I think there was only one person still working on getting in behind me.
notice we're all only ankle deep at best...
To get started we had to swim to a white buoy and then hang a left to swim up towards Brighton Beach. I couldn’t see the buoy in the glare of the sun so I just followed green swim caps. On that first stretch to the first Orange buoy (there was one orange buoy on each end of the course) I was really doubting the wisdom of my decision to fly cross country over night and then hop into a really cold long swim. My body was burning and the wind across the top of the water wasn’t particularly pleasant. I’ll admit there was a little internal debate about the merits of just turning in at the one mile point (you could swim 1 or 2 miles or go for a full 5k). That idea wasn’t in any danger of winning out, but it was at least getting heard :)
As I made my way out to that buoy I was aiming for green caps again since I couldn’t actually see the buoy. I figured a lot of the swimmers in the water were locals and knew where things were. I gradually passed various groups of swimmers that got a head start on me while I was busy taking my time getting in the water.
Things really thinned out after the 1 mile marker where the majority of the swimmers turned in, but I still had some company around me. I’m not sure how many did each swim (1 mile, 2 mile, 5k) but a little less than 10 of us went the full distance.
As I swam out towards the pier buoy it felt like the current was working against me a little bit… once I swam around it it felt like it was going against me there too. Fun! A lot of other people said the same thing so it wasn’t just me. I saw someone stop a few times near me and I stopped just to make sure she was cool. I think she was just having a goggle malfunction. Since I was stopped anyways I grabbed my camera for a few quick shots. Before I got started again Mo Siegal came cruising through and made sure to say hello :)
pit stop not too far past the buoy by the pier
Although I was definitely cold I was totally in control of it now. My only major worry was my left shoulder which has been giving me trouble. I could feel that it was pissed off while I was swimming, but the cold numbed it out enough that it didn’t really effect my swim too much. I just put my head down and ground out that last stretch to the other far end buoy. I couldn’t see it for a long time so I just guessed at where it was. I sort of drifted out a ways until I could actually see it. Once that orange ball finally popped up I readjusted my line and aimed for it.
The last leg of the swim was a blur. I was happy to be there but happy to almost be done. At the white buoy I made the turn home and swam it in. I stood up once my hand scraped sand on the bottom. Like I usually do I walked it in to the finish line because I’m not much for running. I was done around 1:45 which is slow for a 5k but given the cold and the current I think it was just fine. At the finish line I was greeted by Dave with a borrowed towel (I traveled so light for this trip that I didn’t have room in my backpack for a towel) and then some volunteers wrapped me up like a baked potato in one of those weird tin foil looking space blanket things. I didn’t really want it though so I asked to be de-baked-potatoed so I could just dry off. I was doing pretty well on the beach with just a towel chatting with some of the people down by the finish line. A lot of them were a little taken aback by my post cold swim not so coldness. I’m not sure how or why my body processes it so well but I’m glad it does. It did strike me as a good idea however to go get some dry clothes on. I walked it back to the aquarium and by the time I got to the boardwalk I had a bit of a tremor going from the wind blowing across me. It wasn’t a full blown shiver, but it was the closest I’ve gotten to one from swimming.
hanging out with Dave Barra on the beach
CIBBOWS is a fun crowd, I like them a lot. Post swim we had a room at the Aquarium to hang out and warm up. I got into some dry clothes and skipped the hot tea and coffee and found myself a beer. It was a pretty good idea. Once everyone was settled and cleaned up from the swim a bunch of us went down to Ruby’s Bar which is a long time Coney Island mainstay that’s being pushed out of it’s current location. I don’t know all the details but a lot of people are less than pleased with this and a large group of people were out to support them on what was looking to be their last day in business on the boardwalk.
hooray post swim beer!
the scene over at Ruby's... live music, Coney Island characters, and boardwalk food
After a couple of hot dogs we split and drove all over with Dave and Rachel. He dropped me off at Cristian’s house who was putting me up for the weekend. He was also the race director for the swim and a fellow nominee for World Open Water Swimming Performance of the Year! We ventured out for some dinner at a Korean joint in his neighborhood and then I pretty promptly crashed out. After a red eye flight, a few beers, and a big long cold swim my body was done for the day! The good news was Sunday was going to include one more trip to the beach :)
Well, I did it! 12.6 miles of open ocean swimming with 8 ins and 8 outs through the surf. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in water… well honestly at all regardless of whether it was at land or sea. It was substantially harder than my 10 miler in La Jolla at the end of September. I’m feeling equally accomplished and sore right now. The water temp started somewhere around 64 and I would say in spots it ranged down towards 60 with the second half of the race spending most of it’s time down around there. Our initial conditions were calm and glassy but finished with chop and not particularly beneficial currents. It was a pretty brutal swim but I wouldn’t give it up. The experience was amazing and I still can’t believe I managed to pull that off!
In the morning I got up at 4am after of night of not too much sleep. I kept waking up in the middle of the night in anticipation of the day ahead. Once the clock hit 4 for real I got to work getting myself ready. I got my bags squared away and did some do it yourself body marking. I drew the race course on my left forearm (this was ridiculously handy) and then some contact phone numbers on my thigh. I figured if things went sideways midrace I’d be able to call people to help come get me or whatever. Kinda silly, but probably a genius idea.
this is the open water equivalent of writing your heats and lanes on your hand :)
I stayed the night at my friend Robin’s house which is basically square in the middle of the start and finish of the race. I drove from there out to Santa Monica through the empty early morning streets of the West Side of LA and managed to find the pier, but couldn’t figure out how to get to the lot below where I needed to park and where my Kayaker Beth was already waiting for me. We had a quick call and she gave me enough of a clue to figure it out. A few marginally legal U-turns and good guesses later I was in the lot. I decided that we should toss her kayak in my truck to take to Manhattan Beach so that post race her car would be here to load up and let her drive home whenever she was ready to go. I didn’t know what kind of shape I would be after the swim and figured me trying to strap down and drive a kayak through city traffic back to Manhattan Beach later in the day would probably be a little disastrous. This turned out to be a pretty good plan.
Once we got down to the pier in Manhattan Beach we saw a small progression of swimmers and kayaks bustling about. We unloaded her boat and walked it down to the beach then I ran off to find some parking. Luckily I came prepared with a ton of quarters. The lot they recommended had 10 hour parking, but it required change and there was no change machine to be found. Back at the beach I saw some friends, and Steve Munatones from the Daily News of Open Water Swimming came by to say hi. He gave me some priceless insight to the race course… he told me the trick was to swim to the end of the pier and turn right. It was a little too early for smart-assery, but since I like Steve I let it slide :) After that I found my friend Bekah and got my hands on my packet and timing chip. Since I live like 4 hours away from Santa Monica I couldn’t exactly get my stuff on Friday night so she was cool enough to get that for me when she went to get hers.
my friends are ridiculous... and that's why they're my friends :)
As it got closer to go time we had to get the kayakers in the water. This wasn’t so easy. The water was fairly calm off shore, but we had pretty regular 4-5 footers rolling through. A lot of paddlers were getting flipped in their attempts to get out past the breakers. I was worried about getting Beth out there because she’s really light and doesn’t necessarily have the horsepower for those big bursts of speed required to get out through bigger waves. We made our first attempt and just couldn’t get a break. The current had pushed us too close to the pier to keep trying so we pulled the boat out and walked it further down the beach again to give it another go. I guided the back of the kayak and tried to stabilize it enough to keep her out of trouble. Once we got her past the first line of waves I hung back and read the incoming waves and yelled out directions. It was a little dicey but she got through 2 more lines of waves and out into the flat water… phew!
On the beach they started to line us up and get a head count. As one would expect you kinda want to know how many swimmers are getting in for a 12.6 mile jaunt in the Pacific. It was mainly wetsuited swimmers out there but there were a handful of other swimmers going just skins. I think it was just Me, Bekah, Daniel S. and Colin H. (who was here from England!) who eschewed the warming goodness of a neoprene body casing. Once everyone was present and accounted for we had a bit of a countdown and they cut us loose. Generally I don’t believe in running but I gave it a little jog down to the water since they were filming it… I didn’t want to look all fat and lazy on camera :) Once I was in I washed out my goggles real quick and then worked on swimming to that first buoy. I found Beth just shy of it and got her into position. I like her on my right side so I can see her when I breathe and just a little ahead of me. I was lucky in that we got to practice back in Long Beach around a month ago back so she was used to my stroke and my general demeanor in the water.
waiting for the start... green caps are relays, yellow are soloists
That 1st leg to Dockweiler was long as hell! It took me an hour and a half! Way more than a 2.4 mile swim should take me. On the way there I managed to get into an ok rhythm but my left shoulder was bothering me a lot. I had been having issues with it the last couple weeks but I’ve been trying to just work through it. I was pretty concerned that my shoulder might smoke me out of this thing early. I was going to do everything I could to avoid it, I would have kicked on my back if I had to, but I just tried to swim as well as I could in an effort to not make it worse. On that first turn in to go to the beach I had two other guys right there with me in wetsuits. I tried to just hang behind them a bit. It was a little tricky getting out of the water, but on the beach I strolled through the chute and drank a little water and grabbed a banana. I ended up taking my sweet ass time through most of these stations. No running, no rushing. I walked, ate and chatted my way through all of them. Getting back in the water was a little exciting. The waves were pretty healthy here and I got tumbled a little bit trying to get past the breakers. I met Beth back at the turn buoy (which like all the others turned out to be exceptionally far from shore) and had a quick feed then got back to work.
swimming up to the first turn buoy after 2.4 miles
The next leg was to the north end of Dockweiler Beach and this was a 1.8 mile shot. I knew that there was a weird pipe thing on this leg thanks to some input from my Catalina Swim22 swimmer Chris. Although I knew it was there it was still pretty shocking to swim over. During the 2nd Dockweiler leg I had some chaffing issues with my suit on my thighs, not fun. Luckily there was vaseline at all stops. It was a little awkward to lube up my danger zone in front of strangers but what are you going to do right? Despite my best efforts I got pretty chewed up on my thighs, luckily everywhere else came out just fine. Somewhere around here is where I ditched my swim cap. It was pissing me off and I didn’t want to deal with it for another 10 miles. Beth was worried I’d get cold without it, I pointed out thin latex on a bald head isn’t exactly getting much accomplished. I placed it on the blade of her paddle and she tucked it away in a bag on the boat… I was much happier the rest of the day without it.
On our way to Marina Del Rey there were lots of airplanes overhead. We were even with LAX and nearing where my friend lives. I could recognize the street that leads to her place by the super tall palm trees. I felt encouraged by this… we were getting places! On the way into the beach I had an accidental body surfing adventure… a wave hit me just right and I rolled with it like I would at home in Avila. Not too long later I had second thoughts about this, I was tired and in unfamiliar water… body surfing was probably ill advised 6 miles into a swim! I tried to pull out of the wave and got spun sideways down to the sand below the wave. I came out unscathed but it was a good reminder to avoid any body surfing hot dogging.
swimming under the flight path of LAX
This stage also set me up for the only real cut off time that had to be made in the whole thing. You had to crest the mouth of the Marina Del Rey harbor by 12 noon. I left the beach just south of it near 11 so I had an hour to get this accomplished. I made it no problem time-wise, but this is where the swim got substantially harder.
As we cruised through Marina Del Rey the water started to liven up… a lot. We had a wind driven current pushing towards the rocky breakwater and plenty of chop which up until this point hadn’t really been an issue. The swim down the north edge of the breakwater was such a grind. At the beginning of it it sort of looked like an island with a flag in the middle… this turned out to be an unfortunate optical illusion. As you swam along the wall it just got longer and longer. My shoulders were on fire. We stopped for a feed part of the way down it and it was probably one of my shortest ones of the day because we were drifting towards the rocks and I wanted nothing to do with that! Once we got past the end of the seawall it didn’t get any better. More current and more chop, yay :/ After what seemed like an awkwardly long time for 1.8 miles I hit the turn buoy and did the impressively long swim back to shore. These swims to and from shore were some of the hardest parts of this swim. Even my kayaker had a hard time paddling back to the buoy on some of them!
rounding one of the turn buoys to head for the beach
From this point on the volunteers at the rest stations were all sufficiently freaked out by me. I rolled up overly casual with no wetsuit and no cap like nothing was going on. Everyone wanted to get me a new cap but I had to explain that I took it off on purpose. That didn’t seem to register with most folks. The volunteers at these aid stations were excellent by the way. Always positive… clapping, cheering, some stations had cowbells even! I don’t know where they came from but I’m glad they were all there!
When I got back in the water to swim back to Beth my muscles locked up HARD! My pecs up towards my armpits turned to stone and the muscles that go through the crook of my elbows tightened up big time. I had a feed with Beth at the Kayak and tried to stretch them out a bit but nothing was really working. I figured I needed to just keep swimming because, well, what the hell else was I going to do right? I probably had the pleasure of this sensation for at least a mile. Awesome :/ The tightness in my elbow region never regained that intensity, but it also never completely left for the rest of the swim.
eating and drinking... lots of this went on
Our next stop was Venice Beach and we had to swim over the top of the pier and then in. The pier doesn’t look so big… but if you keep swimming towards it that problem solves itself. It took a while to get there for sure. On the way to the pier I passed 3 dudes according to Beth (I saw nothing at this point, just water and her). I think one was a solo and the other two were relay swimmers. On the beach I saw a guy working on pulling himself out of the race. It was a good reminder that I wasn’t the only one who thought that this was hard. I’m curious how many people didn’t make it, I heard of a fair number of people pulling out or being pulled throughout the day. On my way back into the water and through the waves I ran into Jen from the Swim22 relay. It was quite the fancy meeting you here kind of situation :) No marathon swimming for her today though, she was paddling for a friend.
The next leg of the swim was to another part of Venice beach. It like all the other legs after Marina Del Rey was a total grind even though they were now all down to 1.2 miles a piece. At this rest stop the people working it were totally shocked at how I was doing as a non-wetsuiter. One lady told me that I looked better than anyone else that’s come through there! I figure I may not be fast but I am very cold tolerant… that counts for something right?
From here I only had 2 more stops and they were both in Santa Monica. I could see the pier and this is where I decided that no matter what I could not fail. Nothing could go wrong enough to stop me… unless I was you know, eaten or something like that. I would dolphin kick on my back or breast stroke or whatever for 2.4 miles just to successfully complete this damn thing. Luckily my arms and shoulders were holding together. I was in a lot of pain in that general region but I’m pretty good at ignoring that in the moment. I’m going to be a huge baby about it for the next couple days as I recover however :)
Once we passed through the 1st Santa Monica checkpoint it was clear sailing to the pier. We kept grinding it out and once we got within 500m of the pier the water went from sea green with 10-15 feet of visibility to brown and murky… fun. I put my hand through a couple pieces of trash which was charming, but luckily nothing too gross. As we rounded the top of the pier I started to get really excited on the inside. This thing was finally over… I defeated the coast of LA. At the last turn buoy I had a quick chat with Beth and she paddled down the beach to find somewhere to land her kayak. I swam straight in towards the beach and the big red arch set up for the finish. After stroking though a couple waves I was in water shallow enough that I could stand and walked it the rest of the way in. I saw my friend Robin and my Coach Nancy on the beach cheering for me. I was really stoked to see them, especially seeing as I was finishing waaaay later than I had anticipated. It was 3 o’clock… I had been in the water for just over 8 hours! I plodded through the sand through the arch, took a deep breath and enjoyed the fact that I was done… finally… ahhh. Not too long after we had another finisher. This guy was from Nepal and we saw each other at every rest stop and yelled little hellos and good jobs at each other all day. I’d be going out as he was coming in. We had a little congratulatory hand shake and he went off to celebrate with his friends and family and I went off to rehash the day’s events with mine.
Done!
High Five from Brian while my Nepali friend celebrates behind him
Post race I spent time with Nancy and Robin while I tried to figure out what to do with myself now. I wasn’t 100% mentally after the race. It wasn’t from being cold, I felt fine in the temperature department… I was spaced out from the crazy amount of exercise that had just gone down. I mean I was out there for 8+ hours dude! After talking with some race people, my coach, my kayaker and others me and Robin got to work on splitting. My meter down in Manhattan Beach was just about to expire and I really didn’t want a parking ticket to cap off my day. Once I sat down in the car I texted my friend Bekah to see how her swim went since she wasn’t on the beach when I finished. About now is when I started putting it together that I was her ride back to Manhattan Beach… D’oh!!! She’s a lot faster than me and for some reason I just assumed she finished hours ago and left before I got back… like I said, the brain was moving a little slow post race! We turned the car around and reparked next to the pier to scoop her up. While we were there we also picked up various other things I had forgotten at the beach (bottles, goggles, etc.) and I got a finisher’s t-shirt up at the expo that I was unaware of being available previously. On the drive back to Manhattan Beach Bekah and I traded swim stories from our individual excursions while Robin drove us along the coast so we could relive our route backwards and much faster.
dazed and confused with epic goggle lines!
When I got to my truck I found it with no parking ticket on it despite the meter being expired for over an hour, yay! I also found it with my window rolled all the way down on the driver’s side… whoops! I guess I started the day not 100% in the brain department. Amazingly after 11+ hours in underground parking no one messed with it. Everything was still there… awesome. I drove back to Robin’s house and promptly retired to the bath tub for a while. We finished up the evening with some steak, scotch and a huge piece of cake. Perfect. The next morning I repeated my bath tub soak, found some ibuprofen, and made my way to Agoura Hills to see my coach for a while. I showed her pictures and video from the race and talked a little bit about where I go from here… that part remains a work in progress.
I’m still riding pretty high on the feeling of accomplishing this swim, but whenever you do an open water race this long it’s not an individual event. I have a lot of people to thank for getting me through it. A huge thank you goes to Beth Barnes for kayaking for me. She did an awesome job and I would hire her again in a minute for anything I’m doing in the ocean. She was fantastic. Another thank you to Bekah for talking me into entering the event. When I was just toying with the idea she convinced me that we both needed to swim it… whoops :) Having a friend in the race turned out to be a great motivatory tool in the lead up to the event. She did a great job and I’m proud of both of us for sticking to it and finishing the race. Thanks to my coach Nancy for staying on me from a distance to make sure I was ready to swim this, and for showing up and waiting for me at the finish. It was awesome to hear her yelling for me from the beach when I came out of that last wave in Santa Monica! A big thank you to Robin for housing me for the weekend and taking care of some of the driving while I was still recombobulating post swim. We’ve been friends since high school and she always comes through when I need her. Beyond that, thank you to all of you that left me comments on the blog/facebook/twitter or sent me text messages and emails through the whole thing. All the support and encouragement I get from you guys helps keep me going when I have crazy person ideas like summer open water tours or 12+ mile swims up the coast of LA :)
getting out of the ocean for the last time, waving at Nancy and Robin
Well that felt weird. After months and months of focusing all my attention on the open water world I hopped in the Short Course Meter competition pool for some fun and diversion up in Walnut Creek today. Although I made an earnest attempt to channel my inner sprinter I don’t think I found him! None of my races felt that great, but I had a good time and saw some friends I haven’t seen in quite a while so that makes it worth it. Plus it’s good to find out now how much work I’m going to need to do to transition back to shorter races once I run out of ocean races!
I got out to the pool a little before 8 this morning and got in for warm ups. The SCM pool was open still but I’d rather have some space to move so I swam in the SCY pool to get ready. I did walk over and do one start just to make sure I wasn’t going to have any problems with that. I had lots of leg cramping going on during that Catalina adventure so I thought that might resurface while diving or turning. Luckily I seem to have worked that out of my system, phew!
went full on age group style today with my heats... you're never too old apparently
I started my day with the 50 breaststroke. I swam this race here last year and it was semi disastrous. It was just after my first ever 200m fly and I totally botched the first stroke after the pull down. Well this year I had the foresight to not swim the 200m fly, but I made the exact same mistake on the pull down! Too deep again! And on the way back I over corrected and my feet shot way up out of the water on the first pull. I got video of it this time thanks to my friend Coach Chris from Mountain View. I don’t look too deep at first, but watch how long it takes my head to break the surface (I’m in lane 1 nearest the camera)… ugly… but it was actually a best time in SCM if you can believe it! Even with no tech suit and a major almost DQable mistake… in all fairness though my previous SCM times in this event weren’t that great anyways, but I’ll still take the best time :)
After the 50 breast I had a good sized break before my next 2 events that were set one right after the other. I was kind of hungry so I got a hot dog from the concession stand which I would generally never do, I can’t eat at swim meets, but I didn’t really care today. It was about fun not fast so a hot dog was ok. I did one other thing I’ve never done at a meet today as well… I took a nap! I totally fell asleep slumped over in my beach chair! I hope I wasn’t snoring… I still can’t believe that I fell asleep, but apparently I needed it. I woke up half way through the women’s 100m free which was good because it gave me time to warm up before my 100m free. Over by the warm up pool I ran into my buddy Walt who was also in the 100m free and 50m fly like me.
I had a pretty fantastic view of the lane line thingie from my chair, jealous?
I was seeded at a 1:04 for my 100m free but I really didn’t think that was going to happen. Don who swims with us in Avila occasionally was there and asked what I was going to swim, I guessed a 1:26 plus or minus 20 seconds :) That turned out pretty close. I stepped up to the blocks next to the only other guy I’ve seen at a meet who overachieves as much as I do in the beard department. His is a little sleeker though… he’s got a hydrodynamic braid thing going on… seeing as he beat me pretty handily I may have to investigate that. Off the dive it became apparent my SDK has degraded a lot, crap. On the surface my sprinting wasn’t very sprinterly. I wasn’t moving super slow but I didn’t feel like I managed to find that sprint gear. Turning at the 50 I felt really tired. Like way too tired for the circumstances. On the last 25 I tried to open it up but I’m not sure it really happened. I did however move over to the lane line for reasons I haven’t figured out yet. I think I was trying to draft out of habit or something… not that drafting through a lane line is a particularly effective practice. I ended up swimming a 1:05.84. Not my best work but not completely awful. I may need to shift my focus to longer pool events this winter though.
random freestyle action!
I finished up the meet with the 50m fly. Generally I love this event. It’s short and I’m generally pretty good at it. I was seeded at 29 and swam a 31.3, yuck. That’s slower than my slowest LCM time in the 50m fly! Oh well. Just more motivation to work hard later.
Once I was wrapped up with all my actual swimming I hit the massage tent and that was basically the best idea I had all day. They were charging a buck a minute and I thought that was worth it. The chick over there mashed me pretty good and got really deep in my muscles. A lot of it hurt while it was going on, but I came out feeling good. I need to do that more often. A little later I caught up with my friend Sarah B. and we grabbed dinner and hung out for a while. She wasn’t swimming today because she’s more focused on USA-S meets at the moment, but neither of us has forgotten our breaststroke deathmatch. I’m not sure where or when but I’m sure all 3 distances will be recontested.
Tomorrow I’m going to drive down to Monterey for some open water action on the way home. I’m pretty stoked for this. I used to live there but never really spent any time in the ocean because I didn’t know anyone else who did it.
I guess there's worse places to try and swim 10 miles :)
I was up at o’dark thirty this morning to swim the La Jolla Cove Swim Club 10 Mile Relay as a solo swimmer. Check in started at 6am and the sun was yet to make an appearance at that point. The air was already nice and warm, but I was hearing murmurs about how the water was cold. It turned out to be 61 which is the same as yesterday’s Malibu swim and just where I like it. The water was nice and calm throughout the morning, but it definitely got more lively as the day went on.
what the cove looked like when I showed up in the morning
I got my race numbers drawn on and picked up my goody bag then set up camp. I had my beach chair and a big bag of liquids and various gels and shotblock type things to keep me fueled during the race. While I was getting situated I ran into Dan from Indiana who I traded a few emails with recently. He swam a few of the same events as me this summer in the midwest but we hadn’t actually met face to face until this weekend. I got to talk to a few other people that recognized me from the blog or various corners of the internet, and then a little while later my long distance open water peer pressure buddy Bekah showed up. I’m the one that planted the seed about the 12.6 mile swim in October, and she’s the one that turned me onto this swim.
Bekah pre-race
As the sun came up it was getting closer to go time. I got myself good and greased up since I was anticipating like 5 hours in salt water. I use Bag Balm on these longer races at the suggestion of my friend Laura, it’s worked out pretty well for me so far. They called all the solo swimmers (maybe 12 of us?) and lead off relay swimmers down to the beach to get briefed on how the whole thing was going to go down. Basically we had a skinny triangle course that we had to do 10 laps of. Between each lap we had to get the attention of a counter to take our number and mark off the lap. Since we would be unescorted for the swim you had to come out and climb the stairs up to the park to feed. I planned on getting out every 2 miles to drink and eat something. Around mile 5 I started to eat a Gu packet on while standing in the surf on the odd numbered laps to keep my energy up.
At about 7 they got everyone that was swimming that first mile ready on the beach and cut us loose. I let the bulk of the pack take off first. I had 10 miles to deal with and didn’t want to get caught up in a bunch of people sprinting out just 1 mile. Maybe 10-15 seconds after the start I got to work. I took off a little faster than I felt like I should have, but the rhythm was ok so I just went with it. I didn’t really have any issues with roughness or contact with other swimmers save one person that grabbed a handful of my butt on the way to the first buoy. Not exactly what I was looking for but way better than a punch to the head or a breaststroke kick to the ribcage right? The path down to the the first buoy was totally obscured by glare from the rising sun. I couldn’t see anything out there. I just latched on to the pack of swimmers ahead of me and let them do the work. This sighting problem on that leg persisted probably 3 laps for me. After that I just knew where it was and the sighting was toned down quite a bit.
view of the buoy nearest to the beach
At mile 2 I got out and hustled up the stairs to go hydrate. I wasn’t a fan of having to run up the stairs, but it was nice to remove yourself from the water temporarily. I ate a handful of Gu Chomps thingies and downed half a bottle of Gatorade before I took back off for the water. I took a peek at the race clock on the way down and I was decently ahead of my projection for where I figured I should be at that point. That kind of excited me a little bit to think I was even going a little fast! I started to reassess some goals for the swim. Originally I was thinking I could do it in 5 hours flat but now 4:45 was looking a lot more reasonable.
staircase back to the sea
Through the middle of the race I got increasingly comfortable with the course and my stroke. My brain is usually pretty over active on long open water swims but this one provided lots of distraction. I was constantly getting coated in sea grass and having to figure out how to untangle myself. It kept sticking to my neck and armpits where I had applied the Bag Balm to keep from chaffing. Beyond that I could actually see fish on this swim! I know fish live in the ocean and whatnot but I’ve never seen one while doing an open water swim. The fish in the cove are pretty nonchalant about humans all up in their business. I saw various silver and blue fishes on the far end of the course, and bright orange Garibaldi signaled when I was almost back to the beach to start the next mile loop. Bekah said she even saw a little shark of some sort out there but I didn’t see anything that cool. I wanted to take some pictures of the fish while I was out there, but I’m pretty sure if I did anything not swim related while in the water I was going to cramp up and I wanted nothing to do with that!
At mile 6 I was all kinds of excited because my rough guesstimate 10k time for today totally blew my USMS 10k Champs time from Indiana out of the water! Back in July I figured I could knock out a 10k in 3 hours, but the hot water in Noblesville smoked me out and I came in around 3:23. Today I hit mile 6 around 2:40 which when you add in the other .2 miles would bring me in well under 3 hours. This proved my hypothesis that the colder the water and the more it’s moving the better I do :)
Each time coming into the beach was always interesting. As the day went on the surf and the swells got a little bigger, it was never “rough” but it got respectable, and it was hard to know what you were in for when you tried to land on the beach. Quite a few times I stopped just a little too short to put a foot down only to be tossed onto the beach by the next wave. Luckily I landed on my feet most of the time! At mile 8 I swam in too far and the ocean pushed me chest first through the sand. I kinda laughed to myself, stayed on my stomach and flashed my race number to the soloist counter.
Once I came back down the stairs from my feed at the end of mile 8 I was pretty stoked because I knew I was going to make it. Something really awful was going to have to happen to take me out of the game at this point. My arms were hurting and my shoulders were sore, but they weren’t going to give out in the next hour. Right before I got set to launch into mile 9 my friend Bekah floated down a wave to the beach. She was just about to embark on her last lap. We said a quick “hey what’s up” and then got back to finishing up this epically long swim. Mile 9 went down pretty smooth and I took a short break before taking on 10 to down a Gu packet I had stashed in my suit. The guy who was in charge of counting us came over and talked to me for a bit. He said I was looking really good out there and that I didn’t look cold at all. At this point I wasn’t cold and I wasn’t going to get cold, but interestingly I was much more sensitive to the changes in temperature out on the course. He asked me if I was a channel swimmer, and I had to smile and say no not yet sir but I’m working on it. I haven’t picked a channel or decided to swim one but I have a feeling one of these days it might have to happen :)
random shot of me in a chronologically inappropriate spot in the post!
Mile ten was a weird mix of smiling because I was accomplishing the biggest swim of my life and hurting because I was finishing the biggest swim of my life! When I started this year’s open water season my biggest swim was a 5k (3.1 miles), now I’m up to 10 with plans for a 12.6er! It’s amazing how far out of hand this whole open water distance swimming thing has gotten for me :) I felt great on the homestretch back to the beach to finish my race. When my feet hit sand I think I threw a hand up in the air in victory and got a bunch of high fives and handshakes on my way into the finish chute. I came in around 4 hours and 42 minutes which is awesome because it beat both my original goal and my midswim revised goal!
After the swim I hung out up in the park with some friends rehashing the event and trying to eat something. I couldn’t really do it though, my tongue was all weird feeling from the salt water and nothing tasted right. Eventually they did awards and as a 10 mile solo finisher I got a cool little medal, all right! From here it was just me and the freeway for like the next 6 hours… boo. Luckily traffic was pretty mellow, but I think the drive home was harder than the swim! Tomorrow I’m not doing anything physical, but Tuesday I should be back to the regular workouts… gotta keep my momentum up for my Catalina support swim and the Distance Swim Challenge!
This morning I drove out to Malibu to participate in the Swim for Equality hosted by Equality California. This was a totally fun and positive event, I’m really glad I managed to get into it at the last minute! We’re having a bit of a heat wave in California right now and it was unbelievable beautiful at the beach down in Malibu. Sunny with no wind and really calm water (which was around 61 degrees!).
the view here is ok I guess :)
I got to the swim check in area around 8 and got checked in and numbered. What really surprised me is this was a Southern California open water event and I didn’t really know anybody there. I recognized a handful of faces, but not enough to put a name to them. I talked to a few people that said it was their first ocean swim or first swim like this in a real long time. Hopefully coming out and doing this swim inspires a few them to come out and swim some of the masters races in the area!
As we got closer to the start of the swim I got myself suited up and packed everything that wasn’t coming with me into my bag. This was a 1.7 mile point to point swim so the event staff was taking people’s bags down to the finish for them which was really nice. As tends to be the case in non Masters action I was the one guy in just a regular square leg swimsuit. I did see 2 other people that weren’t in wetsuits, but they were out in racing techsuits so they sort of blended in. Before it was time to go they massed all the swimmers together for a couple pictures and then sent us off into the ocean!
pre race briefing
I was towards the back of the pack on the way to the water (I’m not much for running, plus I was playing with my camera a little), but by the time I hit that first buoy about 200m out I passed probably 3/4 of the people out there. From here there was a small group that pulled away from everyone really quickly and I was swimming in a scattered group of swimmers that was increasingly further behind them. Since this wasn’t really a race anyways, just a fun fundraiser type of deal, I tried to focus on just swimming smooth and steady to get ready for tomorrow’s 10 mile swim. I had a hard time finding the buoys that marked the course but it was just a straight line anyways so I just swam north and hoped for the best. I sighted off other swimmers from time to time and used the lifeguards on paddleboards as confirmation that I was doing the right thing.
from the race course!
As is my nature…. I stopped in the middle for a minute to get a quick picture and some video. The view from out in the water was totally gorgeous. I still can’t get over what a nice day it was!
After my brief cinematographic pause I made a point of trying to catch up to some of the people that had pulled away from me while I was messing around with my camera. I caught up to one of them but the other 2 were pretty much gone.
At the last buoy I came around and popped my head up for a bit just to make sure I was turning in the right spot. I could see a bunch of people on the beach but I couldn’t tell if they were the ones I was looking for. Another dude hit the buoy and was aiming for the same spot so I figured I was on point and put my head down and started swimming. As I got closer to shore I could feel the swells coming in, some pushed me a little forward some a little back. All of a sudden I could feel I had one building behind me that was going to be just right to surf in. I got picked up by the wave and started rushing towards shore. After a couple seconds though I realized I had no idea what kind of beach I was dealing with and didn’t want to end my ride with a head first dive into the sand so I tried to pull up and out of the wave… not the easiest thing to do! I managed to break free before I met the hard packed sand on the beach and then fought my way though the last little waves right there at the shore. The run to the chute was lined with all kinds of people cheering and yelling and it was totally awesome to finish like that. I felt like I won something :)
catching my breath post swim
After the swim I hung out on the beach and watched everyone else finish. My friend Robin joined me as well to hang out on the beach a bit. Once everyone else cleared out we stayed on the beach for another hour just lounging around watching the waves and the dolphins playing off in the distance. It was really a perfect beach day.
hanging out at Zuma after the swim
Around noon we made our way out to Topanga for an after party for the swim. We drove up into the hills and up some squirrelly little roads to get to the house the party was at. The pool on this place was unbelievable. It was an infinity pool that faced out into a big wooded canyon. I want this pool! I floated around in the water for a while and sat around the pool soaking in the view and chatting with a few people. I don’t know why all open water swims don’t end like this… someone should look into that :)
this is the life!
I finished up my day with a drive down to San Diego. In the morning I have to be at the La Jolla Cove to take part in a 10 mile relay… with myself. I’m going to do the whole thing solo and this will be my biggest swim attempt to date. It’s supposed to be a learning experience/tune up for my 12.6 mile swim in October. Hopefully everything goes according to plan!
choppy, windy, rainy and cold... what's not to like?
One of the best things about open water is you never get the same race twice… even if it’s the same course… today’s Big Shoulders swim was totally different from last year! We had wind, rain, chop, and 62ish degree water. I had no idea Lake Michigan could get this stirred up and gnarly inside the breakwater off of Ohio Street Beach. Needless to say I totally dug this version of Big Shoulders :) Not to say I wouldn’t have appreciated a little sunshine on my back, but I think overall this was a great experience.
everyone getting signed in and numbered
I started my day with a walk from the hotel to the beach. As I neared the lake front I could feel the wind really kicking. I started to smile to myself because I knew the water was going to be a mess which would make the race exponentially more interesting. This year I made sure to be there right on time to speed up the standing in line portion of the morning. With 800 people registered it can take some time to get everyone checked in and marked up. While I was getting numbered, and they were really thorough in their marking this year… both arms and both legs… I ran into my friend Ben who is the guy who has been doing all the great video editing for USMS. He’s the one who put together my open water video a few months back that was on the USMS homepage for a couple weeks. We caught up a little bit and did a little pre-race interview so hopefully you guys will see my smiling bearded face in a new video sometime soon :)
Getting numbered up... photo from the USMS Facebook Page
After hanging out and talking with folks on the beach for a bit I decided to go get wet. No one else had really gotten in that I had seen so I figured I might as well be “that guy” and break the ice. I swam out a couple of buoys and messed around with my new camera to make sure it works underwater and figure out how everything works. The water felt great, it was a touch colder than yesterday but good for me. A lot of the other kids swimming today didn’t really share my opinion however. I think the wetsuit rental tent was doing some pretty brisk business today!
experimental aquatic self portraiture
Once I got out of the water pretty much everybody I passed asked me about the water temperature. The stock response was something along the lines of it’s plenty tropical just like Hawaii… I don’t think anyone believed me :) Around 10 minutes later they pulled us together for a race briefing and then sent the first wave off into the water. This year started with an “Elite” wave that was supposed to be the 50 fastest swimmers in the race. There were definitely some legit people in the mix this morning… this has got to be one of the most competitive masters events in the country (don’t read that as fast people only btw, if you’re not super fast don’t worry you’ll still have fun too). I hopped in the water for the start to get some video and take a couple pictures…
the elite wave getting in the water
Once I was done shooting video I had to hurry back to the beach and run across the start mat for my timing chip. I was the last dude in my heat to get in the water! The downside to this was I started way in the back of the pack. Once the horn went off for us to go I had nowhere to go! Major traffic jam-age was in effect that first couple hundred meters. Even though it was tight I didn’t get hit too bad by anybody. Someone did scratch me up really good with their timing chip though. He swam like diagonally across me and scratched me on my back and arm with the edges of it. I think that’s my weirdest mini injury of the year. As we got closer to that first turn it started to separate out decently but it was still pretty dense. This is a good thing though because sighting to that buoy was nearly impossible, I let the pack lead me and just hoped that they were right. I fell into a pretty good rhythm but it didn’t feel too fast, probably because you had to adjust fire so much for the water conditions. The chop was really impressive and unpredictable so you really had to go with the flow when picking when and how to breathe in order to not inhale lake water.
The rest of the triangle course is pretty easy to navigate since you can use the Chicago skyline as your guide. I never really saw buoys 2 and 3 until I was right on top of them. Once I got going with lap 2 I had plenty of room to do my own thing but I could always see somebody to make sure that I was on course. Once I came around the 1st turn buoy for the 2nd time I decided to take a quick photo break. I figured I was in no danger of winning anything, a minute wouldn’t kill me, and if I had a camera in my swimsuit I might as well get a little use out of it! I moved myself far enough away that I wouldn’t impede anyone’s progress and started to take pics/video. I think some of the lifeguard types in one of the rowboats started yelling something at me but I have no idea what they were saying. In case it was “are you ok” I flashed a thumbs up… but I don’t think that’s what they meant because they kept yelling something. After a minute I was back on my way, but in the meantime here’s the only video of the race from way out in the water!
The rest of the race was pretty mellow, but I did fall in pace with a random breaststroke kicker for a while that I put a lot of effort into avoiding. This is a pet peeve of mine… if you need a break or to pop your head up, please don’t frog kick until you KNOW there isn’t someone’s head/chest/stomach/etc within striking distance! I saw a lot of this today because of all the chop. What I try to do when in that situation is breaststroke hands with a light dolphin kick. You get to see and no one get kicked, it’s a win win. Anyways… once I hit the last turn I tried to pick it up a little bit. I took a line a little closer to the wall this time, I’m not sure that was the best call however. The water seem rougher the closer you got to it.
I ended up finishing around 9:44 which would put my time around 1:41 which is waaaay slower than last year. Luckily everybody was way slower. They announced that the winning times this year were something like 12 minutes behind the year previous! A lot of people I talked to added 15-20 minutes to their previous times.
I hung out on the beach for a while afterwards talking to people in the drizzle. Apparently it had rained pretty hard while we were in the water and the jacket I used to cover up my stuff was soaked! Luckily I didn’t have anything water sensitive in there! Even with my jacket as cover my shirt got wet but my race tshirt didn’t so I wore that on my way home… only to get that soaked on the way there!
I love the view here! such a cool venue!
Eventually I went back to the hotel to wash the lake off me and then venture back into town. I went back to Michigan Avenue to do a little shopping and then hopped a cab to the Shedd Aquarium. It’s pretty good, worth the trip. From there I put some mileage on my flip flops… I walked up the lake front to the Navy Pier and then back to the hotel. I finished up my evening with dinner in town with my buddy Evan and his wife. Now my big internal debate is what to do tomorrow morning before I split town… sneak in one last swim or sleep in? I really want to do both, we’ll see which one wins out :)
