2010 Corona Del Mar 1 Mile Swim Wrap Up

in my happy place... cold salt water

I made the way out to the beach this morning with a friend and despite being right in the middle of Orange County things were looking much more like a Santa Cruz kind of swim. It was gray, a little overcast, and we had plenty of cold water. They were announcing anything from 58 to 61 depending on where the reading came from. I would say 58-59 is about on point with how it felt. Not too tropical! There were way more wetsuits on the beach than you would normally see at a Masters event today.

Santa Cruz or SoCal? Hard to tell today!

On the beach I caught up with some friends that I had swam with last week in Laguna. Since it was so cold a lot of people didn’t want to get in and warm up, but me and Natalie decided that we needed to go spend some time underwater to get acclimated. It took a minute to get used to but once I was all the way wet I felt fine. 58 is a pretty warm day at my house, but that first contact with the water never gets any warmer no matter how often you’re in it! We swam out to a buoy and just floated and talked a little bit. The conditions weren’t too bad, the waves weren’t a big deal and the chop was definitely manageable.

just enough chop to be fun!

Back on the beach everyone asked us about the water temperature. There was a lot of temperatural apprehension in the air. Eventually we got a little bit of a course briefing and they had us get lined up on the beach for the start. While waiting for the start I ran into a guy that swam with me at Alcatraz (a fellow non wetsuiter!) and we got to catch up real quick, very cool to see him again.

The start of this thing was the roughest crowd I’ve dealt with all year. I don’t think people self seeded so well. I got caught up in a lot of people slower than me and little traffic jams were building all over the place. I kept having to move laterally to try and find holes to swim through, that wasn’t going particularly well however. Everywhere I tried to go, roadblock. Also I apologize if I crossed of the top of anyone or cut them off… I try to avoid that but this was kind of a mess. As we neared the first turn buoy it only got worse as the pack tightened. I got squeezed in on by somebody and they seriously smacked me in the head like 5 times. In the meantime I was swimming right up into a pocket of people that were going slower than me. As much as I was trying to not touch anybody I’m pretty sure one of my strokes landed square into someone’s butt cheek. I would have swam away from them but I had no where to go with the impending buoy. The upside was at the turn I managed to get the inside line and was able to start distancing myself a little bit.

on the beach waiting for the start

The long leg at the top of the rectangle we did was interesting. I hung to that inside line and tried to aim as directly as I could for the next buoy, the vast majority of everyone else arced waaaay out to the top. It was a little lonely on the straight shot line. I’m not sure how that happened and it made me a little nervous that there was another buoy in the middle that I wasn’t aware of. Turns out 85% of everyone just decided to take the long way to turn number 2. Although a little odd it was fine by me! I think I moved way up in the overall scheme of things on this leg just because I cut like a 100m off of what everyone else was doing.

I turned tight on the next buoy and just tried to continue with an inside line. People were playing this particular leg a little better and I was passed by one or two people. I don’t like getting passed but it was a good wake up for me. I had settled into a groove that was a bit to slow for a mile long swim and it was a good push to speed it up a bit. Had to remember 1 mile is basically a sprint in Open Water!

The last long leg back I tried to hang on to the guy that passed me and draft off him a bit. I did this with varying degrees of success. We got separated a few times though because of big strands of kelp in the middle of the course. I hate scraping over the top of that stuff but I didn’t want to go around it either so I just took the free full torso exfoliation in stride.

On the last turn to the beach I tried to catch the guy in front of me but I just wasn’t quick enough. I even tried to catch a wave on the way in to speed me up but I didn’t quite get it. I maybe got 5m out of a little one and then it pushed on without me. I stood up to run in too early because I could see the bottom and though it was closer than it was. At home if I can see the bottom it means I’m about to hit it… apparently CDM is much more see through! I did an awkward high leg run thing through the last couple meters of the race and and jogged it up into the chute. I didn’t see a clock and haven’t caught my time yet, but I felt like I did pretty well. I was like 50th out of 200 (including wetsuits) which is right about where I think I should be right now. I ended up 3rd in my age group and got an In-n-Out gift certificate for my efforts :) The guy that won my age group was out from Virginia and I had the pleasure of losing to him repeatedly in various national championship swims this summer. We got to talk for a couple minutes and I’m impressed with how well he dealt with the cold water out here considering the hottest swimming I did this summer was all in his state!

After hanging out and watching awards and talking to people on the beach a few of us went to go eat. Apparently the place we were going had changed hands like 3 times since anyone had been there and it had gone from a breakfast burrito kind of joint to a Vietnamese/French restaurant. Odd, but why not right? Lunch was good!

standing on a board in Newport Bay before my first unplanned swim in the bay...

Once we finished up with lunch me and my friend Bekah went out and spent some time on Stand Up Paddleboards. I’ve been wanting to do this forever so it was tons of fun to finally go do it! We did almost 3 miles around the harbor and only took a couple of unplanned swims on our way.  My balance was suspect for sure… I think my feet got the biggest workout in the whole expedition just trying to hold the other 225 pounds of me steady on this floating board! My first fall was a pity fall as I was watching and laughing at Bekah while she went headfirst off her board into the water. I followed soon after… instant karma for sure. Way on the other side of this island we circumnavigated I took another tumble that was best I could tell for no good reason at all. Apparently I just spaced out, leaned too far one way and went face first in slow motion. I wasn’t excited about this, but some people in a passing boat enjoyed my unplanned dive so at least it was good for somebody :) Well and I guess Bekah too because she got to laugh at me without falling in herself like I did earlier. I totally need to go do more of this. It’s fair to say I’m not actually good at it… but I had fun! All told super good day so far, tomorrow I’m off to do a somewhat longer training swim… in the meantime I need some dinner and an adult beverage…

Bekah sneaking past a sailboat

August 28, 2010 | 5 Comments »

2010 Port Hueneme Splash’n'Dash Event Wrap Up

a group of CVMMers contemplating how much of a good idea this is

Today the ocean was handing out beatings and the parking was free… wow… Port Hueneme was throwing a bit of an aquatic temper tantrum. When I got to the beach I was greeted with news of 52 degree water and 6 foot waves… holy crap! I could tell right from the start today was going to be interesting.

52 is towards the bottom of my range of what I’ll take on without a wetsuit, and seeing as I don’t really travel with one anyways it was completely off the menu anyways. I got into my jammer and walked down to the water to check it out… a little brisk for sure. As I walked a little deeper into the water I could feel the force that the water was rushing in and out with… again, wow.  As it got closer to go time it became very apparent I was the only person that had any intention of not wearing a wetsuit in the water today. Heh… oh well… at least everyone will know which guy I am in the event pictures :)

little people, big waves

We started with the sprint event which had a 400m swim, there was a pretty decent number of people signed up for this. When they went off to try and get in they were absolutely brutalized by the water. It kept pushing people all the way back to shore. A lot of swimmers eventually just walked away from it. There were a lot of lifeguards working this event and they were earning their money on this one. Everywhere you looked there was a guard grabbing somebody or tossing them a rescue can to help them get reset and try again. They were talking people through how to get out there, when to duck dive and stuff like that. High five to those guys for doing such a good job, without the life guards we would have had some major problems! The original plan was to start the other races 10 minutes after this first one, it got pushed back 5 more minutes because no one had made it back to the beach yet from a 400m swim! I got a video of the first minute of the sprint race… the height of the waves doesn’t translate well to video from where I was shooting, but watch how the ocean just shuts down everyone’s progress!

When my race finally came up I was ready to go get this started, but I was worried about a friend that I train with who had driven down to try it. We’ve never ever had a swim in Avila on a day that had this kind of turbulence in the water and after watching the 400m I was worried she’d get beat up the same way. So the plan was I’d stick with her until we got past the breakers. We went though each wave together and I think we did ok. Once the breaking waves mellowed out (there were still big swells going in all directions further out) a lifeguard zeroed in on us and asked if we were cool. I let her know I was fine, I was just trying to make sure my friend made it to the buoy. She took over watching my friend and I took off on my swim. I needed to get moving a little faster to warm up my insides a bit. My friend made a whole lap of the course and I’m super proud of her. That was without a doubt the roughest water she’s ever seen in her life and she worked her way through it! Good stuff!

getting ready to see what we could do with this angry ocean

Once I got like 200m past the buoy I started to find a decent rhythm and the cold had faded away for the most part. Because of the way I started the race I was pretty much by myself at this point and I couldn’t see any swimmers in front of me because they were hidden in the peaks and valleys in the water. The motion in the ocean was really impressive. Hard to say how big the swells were, but they never stopped. They pushing back towards the start of the race and you had to fight your way through one pretty much every stroke. After a while I started to pass people but I still couldn’t see the huge orange buoy. Eventually I stop and asked a guard to just point which way I should go since I was never going to see the thing until I rounded it.

Once I made the turn I was faced with the same problem but amplified with glare from the sun. Since I was swimming blind again I just aimed back and hoped for the best. About 3/4 of the way there I got a helpful it’s-over-there point from a guard on a paddleboard and made my way to the buoy. Since the Iron Swim was 2 laps I had to do this whole thing all over again, but the catch was I had to do the WHOLE thing all over again. Like swim up to the beach and stand on dryland and then swim back in. Yikes. On the way in I caught up to a girl on my team and we came in together and both took a minute on the beach to just stare at the water and make sure we really wanted round 2… a fair number of people passed on swimming lap number 2… we both looked at each other and decided it was go time. Quick little high five and we were off. We were together for a little while working through the waves but once I could actually swim I pulled away and was back to swimming by myself again.

At this point I was concerned about the possible effects of the temperature but I didn’t seem to be exhibiting anything beyond being a little chilly. No shivering, a few almost cramps that never came to fruition, and I seemed to be on mentally. I was kind of like goofy happy in the middle there though. I think it was more being happy to be in the ocean and to have most of the way pulled off this swim without a wetsuit, not cold water was shutting down my brain.

On the last leg of my swim I got an escort from a lifeguard on a paddleboard. This made my life way easier, no more trying to sight on things I was in no danger of actually seeing. He stayed like 3 or 4 meters to my right and just kind of glided along fast enough to stay in front of me. I picked up my stroke rate a bit and put my head down. As much fun as I was having I was ready to be done. At the last buoy before I had to turn in and swim through the waves back to the beach I stopped and thanked my guide and then got back to business.

I was hoping to maybe catch one of these big waves on the way in and bodysurf it most of the way to the beach but it wasn’t really in the cards. I got a piece of one but it didn’t take me too far. After fighting my way through the waves a bit I finally hit sand and walked on out of the ocean. My coach and a few of my teammates were right there yelling for me which was nice. I was very pleased to have just dominated the one man non-existent non-wetsuit category :) When I jogged through the chute my time was around 1:17 minus the 15 minutes for the 400m swimmers which put me pretty close to an hour. Based on the time and the water conditions I think the course was only 2 miles… or I had an absolute banner day… either is possible I guess.

the beach! I missed you...

As one would expect the water totally flattened out about half an hour after all the racing was done. There were still some healthy surfable waves out there but most of that craziness out past the breakers died down. We did awards on the beach and they gave away a bunch of prizes and stuff.

Although sending that many people into the ocean today was probably borderline ill advised it was really good for me. My big swim this year is the 12.6 mile Distance Swim Challenge and it involves a lot of these ins and outs in areas that can have pretty healthy surf. I’m glad I got some experience with it in the middle of a race today since I can’t really simulate it with the occasional 3 foot wave on my beach!

August 22, 2010 | Tags: | 3 Comments »

2010 Naples Island Swim Wrap Up

**Results are now available here

stretching out and warming up for my 3rd go round at the Naples Island Swim

This morning I made my way down to Long Beach to take part in the Naples Island Swim for the 3rd time. This race was my first ever Masters and Open Water event and I’ve really come to enjoy coming back to this race to see where I’m at and how far I’ve come since making my return to swimming. So even though these days the 3 mile swim is more in line with what I’m doing in other events, I chose to race the 1 mile swim as part of my annual how’s-my-swimming check up.

I got down to the beach entirely too early and I think I was the first person there that wasn’t actually working the event. Normally I stay in Long Beach the night before (it’s about 4 hours from my house), but I couldn’t get a room in town because of the Jazz Festival. Instead I split the distance and stayed in Thousand Oaks then drove the rest of the way down in the morning. I got into a drag suit there on the beach and got in the water really early just to get comfortable and swim just a little bit since I hadn’t been able to swim since Wednesday. The water was pretty cold for Southern California, my guess is 62-63ish. With no sunshine overhead it felt pretty chilly but once you got all the way in and floated around for a bit it was nice.

When I came out of the water the beach was starting to fill up a little bit. It was fun to see everybody come out. I haven’t been to an SPMA event since early May because I’ve been traveling and swimming everywhere else so it was great to catch up with all kinds of people. I had a little contingent from my team in attendance as well, along with a guy I swim with in Santa Maria and a lady who swims with me in Avila Beach. Around this time my buddies Chris and Chuck from LiveSwim.net hit the beach as well. They were out to do some livestreaming of the event as a beta experiment. Best I can tell no one has even attempted to livestream an open water race from on a boat so this was a little bit of swimming history in the making! Talking to the guys after the race they learned a whole lot of what it takes to do this kind of event and how to shoot for it, I look forward to seeing more open water livestreams in the near future!

the start of the 1 mile swim... LiveSwim.net is there to capture the action!

After doing a brief video interview with the LiveSwim guys I had to run up the beach a little bit to get to the start of the one mile. I didn’t realize that this year the start was going to be in a different place, I was so busy talking and running around I kind of neglected to look at this year’s course map. So quick protip… always look at the map even if you think you know exactly what’s going to happen at the race!

1 Milers making their way towards the island

Once at the start line I found Julie from my team and lined up with her to my right. She’s a real strong swimmer (first woman out of the water last year!) and I wanted to try and hang with her for as long as I could. When they let us start we all dashed out and I took off way faster than I normally do. Oftentimes in open water races I start with a lighter pace and let other people do their little sprint/thrash for about 200m before they gas out and then swim around. Today I decided that I was either going to be one of them or at least get out in front of them :) On the way around the island to the mouth of the canal I kept Julie pretty close. I’m predominantly a right side breather and all the navigation points are to the left so I navigated off the pack and made sure to look forward on occasion to make sure I didn’t hit a boat or a dock or something. As we got nearer to the canal someone cut me off and separated me from Julie. Through that corner the pack tightened up and I had no where to go for a little bit so I had to just hang on this new person’s feet until there was a little more room to move. In all fairness Julie was probably going to drop me at some point anyways, I was just hoping it would be a little later in the race.

Me and Julie at the end of the race

Inside the canal I got a little more room to breath and I took a line more along the right side of the canal. Even though the left side would have been a tighter line to circumnavigate the canal, the exit is a right hand turn which would give me a little bit of an advantage on the way back to the finish. As I was chugging along through the canal I had a little flotilla of kids on paddleboards around me. I kept hearing yelling from the kids but I knew it wasn’t for me but it was like right at me. Turns out I had one of the younger kids in the race right on my feet. I don’t know if they were savvy enough to be drafting off the big guy in front of them who is about 3x their size, but about 1/2 around this kid pulled up along side me and then took a little bit of a lead. Being passed by a teenage girl wasn’t real high on my list of things to do today, but it’s good to see kids getting a chance to race open water… I never got the chance and I wish I would have been exposed to it as a teenager.

At the end of the canal I was right up against where the turn was and I think I clipped a few people since I had the shorter line out. Once you’ve swam for just a little bit past this point it’s basically wide open back to the beach. I think this is where spending lots of time in the ocean started to come in handy. I could see the white pop up tents on the beach and tried to aim as straight as I could for them. I saw lots of other people who were faster than me zig zagging a little or even stopping to try and sight the beach. Somewhere in here I passed up the kid you passed me in the canal. Being a wily old guy has it’s advantages I guess :)

finishing my race! (photo borrowed from Julie F.)

I tried to pick up the pace a bit on the way in but it wasn’t easy since I had gone out so much harder than I normally do. I swam in until I could touch the bottom with my hands and then jogged in the rest of the way. I have no idea what my time was, but I did win my age group after 2 years of placing 2nd so I was pretty stoked with that!

After my race I got dried off and did a little post race talk on camera with LiveSwim and then got changed into some dry clothes. While we waited for the 3 milers to finish their swims I spent some more time on the beach catching up with people. I’m normally in SoCal like every other week most of the year so it felt weird to have been gone so long. I don’t feel like I got around to seeing everybody I wanted to, but the good news is I’ll probably be down south the next two weekends as well making up for it! Around noon I finally had to split. There was a long drive home in front of me…. plus I was out of quarters for the parking meter!

Random finishers!

All told I had a really good time as always down at the Naples Island Swim. I had a good race, got to see lots of my friends, and finally won the 25-29 age group right before I age up out of it… so next year, 30-34 year olds beware… I’m coming to getcha! :) Also, high five to Merritt and Shore Aquatics for picking up this event this year. We started 2010 with no host for the Naples Island Swim and Merritt and her team stepped up to make sure this swim kept going. I’m highly appreciative of their efforts and hopefully they decide to run the event again next year!

As this week progresses I should have some more footage/coverage of the swim via LiveSwim.net. I’ll post stuff as I get it here and on the RobAquatics Facebook Page!

August 15, 2010 | 3 Comments »

2010 Cruz Cruise 2 Mile Swim Wrap Up

**overall results
*Age group results

Today was round 2 for my Santa Cruz swims, this time it was the Cruz Cruise. This is a 2 mile race using the same piece of ocean as the Santa Cruz Roughwater held the day before. Today’s course started from the left side of the pier, out past a buoy beyond the tip of the pier, and then around 2 buoys set off the the right side of the pier and then back over the top and down to where we originally started from. If you couldn’t follow all that, here’s a drawing for you…

The crowd for the 2 miler was definitely smaller than the 1 miler from yesterday. Although 2 miles is a pretty accessible distance for most swimmers, not everybody is comfortable being in the ocean that long and not everyone is built to spend that much time in the cold. We had a fair number of wetsuit swimmers in the mix, but the majority stuck with Masters Legal swimsuits.

the beach getting ready for today's race

Before the race I was one of the first people to go splash around in the water and get acclimated, maybe only 4 or 5 of us got in the water before the actual race briefing. The water was around 59 again and it felt about right. It’s weird but I feel warmer in the water than I do on the beach when it’s all foggy and breezy. Once the race briefing was over the rest of everybody got in a bit to get wet before the actual start of the race.

my buddy Walt and I pre-race

As we neared 8:30 a line was drawn in the sand and we all got lined up for the start. Since it was a fairly small group (I heard somewhere around 75) we all went off in the same wave. Oddly I ended up bumping into more people today on the swim out than I did yesterday. At one point I had a person on my right and a person on my left trying to cross my line and cut me off… I had no idea what to do with this. Luckily when each of them finally hit me they over corrected in the opposite direction and let me pull forward through that opening between them to some emptier water.

Having swam this leg down the wharf yesterday it was nice knowing what to expect. I tried to keep a little wide to avoid fishing lines, and when I hit loose floating seaweed strands in the last quarter of the pier I knew it was just plant life not hooked lines. The thing I wasn’t expecting was how far out the buoy at the tip was. You couldn’t see the buoy from the beach and I think a lot of us just assumed it would be right there at the tip. It must have been at least another 100m beyond the tip, maybe more.

From there we had to go back down the other side of the pier about 3/4 of the way to the next buoy. On this leg my mind started to wander a bit. I was staring down into the deep blue green water and not really focusing on what I was doing, luckily someone came and smacked me right on the feet and snapped me out of it. I made a pretty decent line for the buoy and got in front of someone who was a bit faster but took a wider line through the turn. The goal on the way to the next buoy was to keep in front of the person I just passed and then try to pick out my next target. I saw a swimmer in a blue cap about 50m ahead of me and put my efforts into catching them… this wasn’t so easy.

I closed the distance on the way back to the top of the pier but I still hadn’t caught up. About a quarter of the way down the pier I caught a big whiff of two very different smells… glorious bacon and sea lion poo. Not an ideal combination unless you want to be a little hungry while simultaneously considering throwing up, luckily the only thing I had in my stomach at that point was a hammer gel packet.

At the bend in the wharf I was within 10m of my goal swimmer. Now was the time to try and make this happen. I really picked up the kick and tried to increase my stroke rate a bit. I don’t know that they were necessarily engaged in the epic battle I was having in my head or if they even saw me, but I was all in. I kept gaining and gaining until all of a sudden I was 5m ahead. As stoked as I was to be ahead I knew I had to keep moving if I wanted to keep it that way. I tried to squeeze out just a little bit more to put some more distance between us, in the process I managed to pass at least one other person I hadn’t even noticed up to this point.

I crossed the finish line at around 58 minutes and secured first in my age group… I wasn’t particularly contested in my age group… but still I’ll take it :)

I dominated the 25-29 age group today! First AND last place... top that!

After the race I hung out on the beach and caught up with some friends. The Santa Cruz masters who were running the show had a table with free food set up and big pots of hot chocolate brewing. Hot chocolate isn’t really my thing, but it’s good they had it out. Some of the swimmers coming out of the water were shivering and shaking pretty hard after their races. Once all the awards were handed out I cruised through Santa Cruz a bit and did some of the touristy stuff before making moves back towards home. This week I think I’m going to be able to get in some bonus ocean training swims but I haven’t totally figured it out yet, we’ll just have to see how the week progresses.

view down the right side of the pier with one of the turn buoys off in the distance

August 1, 2010 | No Comments »

2010 Santa Cruz Roughwater Swim Wrap Up

**Overall results
*Age group results


I woke up nice and early this morning to drive up to Santa Cruz for the annual Roughwater Swim. It’s about a 3 hour shot from my house and a really boring drive through miles and miles of farm fields. Luckily at the end of the big drive you’re rewarded with the wonderment that is the Monterey Bay. I got to the beach a little before 9:30 and was one of the first people to get signed in at the registration table. After getting my numbers written on and picking up a tshirt and timing chip I went and got situated on the big concrete steps between the beach and the street.

I decided to race in my Finis Hydrospeed 2 tights today and got those put on under a towel on the beach then marched off to the water to see what we were dealing with. The first thing I ran into was a water quality warning… uh oh… not what I wanted to be greeted by. The race director said it was because of some bacteria that eats decaying kelp, as long as it’s not poop related I guess I’m ok with it.

at least this is better than the shark warnings I had earlier this month

The water was plenty frosty today, they announced 59 degrees but I have a hard time believing it. At least on the right side of the pier it had to be closer to 57. It was colder than my swim last night anyways and we pegged that at 58. I took my time getting all the way wet and I was a little slow acclimating. Probably because I was a little tired… that seems to have an impact on how fast I can get used to the cold. Once I was comfortable in the water though I was golden. I didn’t really swim so much as I just floated on my back and relaxed and let my muscles soak in that cold water.

the wharf in the distance past my feet

At about 10:45 we got our pre-race briefing and then did the march under the pier over to the start line. I was in the first heat with the other 18-39 year olds. The overall crowd at the start looked smaller than last year, but it was still pretty healthy… maybe 300ish. I made one last short dip into the water to keep cold before the race officially started. They had a boat offshore signaling to us with flags and then a siren to go.

view of the start line from the water with the boardwalk in the background

We ran to the water and were advised to get about chest deep before we started diving or dolphining. I’m not so much for running so I was one of the last to get to the water but I started passing people pretty much right away. As we got going the first big decision was which way to go around a boat someone had parked right in the middle of the line our swim was taking. I swung right on the side closer to the pier, it seemed to be the shortest way to go about things and I’m pretty sure that was the right decision.

that's me swimming up the middle

On the way down the pier I tried to not hang too overly close to it because there were tons of people fishing off of it. I wish they could have given it a break for like half an hour, but the fisherman were undaunted by a couple hundred swimmers crossing through their fishing area. Not too long before the tip of the pier I swam over what felt like fishing line and stopped dead in the water to untangle before I found a hook. I think it was just a big thin string of seaweed though… I guess I’m a little touchy about that kind of stuff from a previous fishing line encounter I had out at Avila beach a couple months ago. While I was stopped momentarily I got a big whiff of the sea lions living down below the pier… they stink… bad.

sea lions... fun to look at... not so fun to smell

On the other side of the pier I started to try and pick up the pace and pick off people in front of me. I had been in a bit of a pack on the other side of the pier but it sort of disintegrated around that corner. I started to look for people to catch up to in front of me and hopped from person to person. This phase of the swim is where spending a lot of time in the ocean was coming in handy. I had people in front of me that were clearly faster than me but couldn’t hold a straight line. They were slaloming down the side of the pier while I was trying to take as direct of a line as possible to the yellow finish chute.

I managed to sneak past maybe 4 people that I was aware of and stroked all the way in until my hands hit the sand on the bottom. I got up and jogged it in and felt really good about my swim. I finished with a pretty respectable time for me and won 3rd place in my age group… last year I was 8th. I swam a 23:15 which is actually slower than last year, but I think maybe the course was a bit short last year because last year’s time was way too fast for me.

Overall another great swim in Santa Cruz, I really dig this event. Lots of swimmers, cold water and easy navigation. This was probably one of my best races all summer. Tomorrow I get to come out and go at it one more time in the 2 mile Cruz Cruise. In the meantime I’m kicking it in Monterey for the evening. I used to live here and it’s one of my favorite places to be. See you kids again tomorrow in the ocean!

post race dip... I'll be back tomorrow!

July 31, 2010 | 7 Comments »

Ventura Splash’n'Dash Event Wrap Up

*Event info
**Official Event Photos

the start of the 1.2 and 2.4 mile swims

So I was *supposed* to go to the LCM Meet in Fullerton today but I got a little sidetracked by some fun in the ocean :) On Saturday the plan was to drive down to Orange County with hopes of getting there early enough to swim in Laguna Beach with my friend Lynn. That didn’t quite happen… I went to a concert the night before and waking up at 4am just wasn’t happening. I still got out the door fairly early though and was down to Thousand Oaks (where the team I’m attached to is) around 9:30ish. I gave my coach a call and we went out to get some breakfast and catch up a bit since I hadn’t seen her in person since nationals in Atlanta and I’ve been swimming all over the place. She told me there was an event in Ventura on Sunday that a bunch of my teammates were going to. It was mainly a swim/run type thing but they were offering a 2.4 mile swim as well… I was pretty much sold at this point. I still went down to Orange County to have a mellow day next to my hotel pool and have dinner with some friends, but Sunday morning I was on my way back up the coast to get wet in Ventura!

yay cold salt water!

When I got to the beach it was very California-Summer-Beach-Morning-tastic. A little chilly and totally gray. The waves weren’t looking too big but the water was definitely active out there. The buoys weren’t set up yet so I didn’t know where we were going, but best I could tell we were in for a bumpy ride. I registered there on the beach and got into my swimsuit and put on a rash guard. I was definitely in the minority as a non-wetsuit swimmer. There was one guy in jammers (hi Chris!), some dude in board shorts doing the 400m swim and Becky from my team was in a B70 Nero Comp which looks wetsuitly but as I can personally attest to has absolutely no warming properties! Everyone else was wrapped in neoprene. The water temps felt like they were around 60-62 which is about perfect for me, I was so stoked to be in water that wasn’t in the 80′s!

On the way down to the water to check things out I was greeted by something I really didn’t want to see, a dead seal. Depending on just how he died could have been a day ender for me. If he was freshly deceased with a big bite taken out of him my interest in an hour at sea was going to diminish greatly. After doing a quick visual autopsy I determined natural causes… no big bites which was quite the relief… although it didn’t really have a head which was somewhat concerning :o

let's just assume old age got this one...

I waded out in the water and cooled myself down in stages until I was comfortable with the water temperature. Eventually other people started to hop in as well. I got out for a while but was colder on the beach in the wind and ended up going back into the water to I guess warm up even though that’s kind of a non-sensical thing to say. I had a whole bunch of CVMM teammates out there today in the water which was really cool! I haven’t been in SoCal for a few months now and it had been a long time since I’d seen most of them.

a group of CVMM ladies en route to getting warmed up

Once all the buoys were in place it became pretty apparent what the course was going to be. We would go straight out to a buoy, hang a right and then round a buoy to the north and come back to round a buoy to the south then back to the middle. Those in the the 1.2 mile swim (the majority of the racers) would get out at this point, the rest of us in the 2.4 Iron Swim would do the loop one more time. Pretty simple on paper but a lot harder once you got into the choppy waters!

A little after 9 we got the go ahead to start and we all rushed into the ocean. I stayed in the very back of the pack to sneak in a couple pictures before I took off for real. Once I started actually swimming I worked my way up through a good number of people and did my best to not swim over or cut anybody off. It was hard though because we were really getting tossed around. On the way to the first turn buoy I caught a mouthful of seawater and almost yakked. That mixed with the motion of the ocean almost got me. I managed to hold it down and get back to my swim. As I came around the turn buoy it became very apparent to me that I wasn’t going to be seeing any of the other buoys for a while. All you really saw was peaks and valleys of salt water. I tried to swing a little wide with my line in search of smoother water but it just wasn’t out there.

On this long leg I had an experience I’ve never had before… I punched a jellyfish! I’ve never actually even seen a live one in the water before (I’m a lucky guy), so to jam my hand straight into a big orange one was a bit of a shock! Luckily I didn’t hit the business end of the jellyfish, I smacked him right in the dome. Disaster averted… but now every piece of kelp or debris I came across was a jellyfish in my head for the rest of the swim. I guess the upside to that is I ceased to think about sharks and other bigger marine life. A little while later in that first loop I had another first experience in an open water swim… my friend Julie stopped to wave and say hi to me. She was a little stressed out by the cold and the water conditions and apparently seeing me swim by was too exciting to let pass by without commemorating with a wave :)

swimmers finishing the 400m swim... teammates Krystal, Nancy and Bonnie are all in there

That second loop didn’t get any shorter but it did get a lot lonelier. The majority of the swimmers exited the course at the 1.2 mile mark to go embark on a run. Only about 8 of us were signed up for the iron swim (I think all but one was on my team!) and 6 of us finished. I think two of them got seasick and pulled out early. I managed to hit another jellyfish on my way around, but I did see and dodge another one that looked way different from the other two. After the turn on the north end  I picked up my own lifeguard on a paddleboard. I think every 2.4 miler got their own escort at some point in the last loop. Since I couldn’t really see the buoys so well I used the paddlers as nav points. I swam from one yellow shirted lifeguard to another to stay on track.

Going towards my last turn I saw two other swimmers going the other way… they turned out to be Heidi and Becky from my team, they took the first two finisher spots for the 2.4 miler and I think I was the 3rd person and first guy across the finish line. When they announced finishes I ended up in second, but the guy placed in first said “hey didn’t you beat me?” so I’m going to go ahead and say a number got crossed somewhere. It didn’t really matter though places 1-3 all won the same prize, an event sweatshirt, so it’s not like it cost me anything. It does make me a little suspect of my time though. They’re saying I came in around 1:18 which given the conditions is totally believable, but I may have been a little faster… I’m not sure… I have a bad habit of not actually looking at clocks when I finish open water races.

After the race a bunch of us went into town and had lunch and talked about the swim. Pretty much everyone was in agreement that that was one of the gnarliest swims any of us had done in an organized event. I’ve swam through bigger swells this year, but nothing quite as choppy and difficult to swim through. That being said, it was totally fun and I would do it again! This week I’m back to my normal grind and then I’m off to Santa Cruz for the weekend.

July 25, 2010 | 7 Comments »

2010 USMS 10k Champs Wrap Up from Morse Reservoir, Noblesville, IN

**Results are posted here

sun coming up before the race

I got up at 4:30 this morning so I could be in Noblesville by 6 to get ready for the race. It was dark almost all the way there, but by the time I hit the beach the sun was on the way up. It was very pretty. I’m not a morning guy so this whole watching the sun rise thing is a little out of the ordinary for me.

I met up with some friends on the beach and we all kind of gave each other the wow-we’re-really-going-to-do-this look. I think most swimmers that are moderately serious could do an open water 10k, but regardless it’s still a pretty reasonably serious undertaking. After lathering my noggin in sunscreen (they Ok’ed swimming capless, hooray!) and applying some swim lubricants I got in the water a little early just to get a feel for the water temperature and talk with some of the people out there floating around. It was like 85ish in the water, with visibility that didn’t extend much past your elbow with your arm outstretched. Luckily the sun wouldn’t be in full effect for awhile, but I was dreading the accompanying heat that would come with it’s arrival. I don’t know how hot it got during the swim, but the thermometer in my car was over 90 by the time I left the lake. It’s fair to say that I felt cooked to about medium well by the time I was done.

my heat starting to assemble itself at the start line

The race had 3 heats. 1 and 2 were for 10k-ers and heat 3 was for the people doing the 5k or the 10k relay. I was in the second, slower wave which is good because I wasn’t particularly speedy today. I’ve learned my lesson about how fast I can actually go when warm water is involved and seeded myself appropriately. The start was pretty civil and I only ran into one person a few seconds into the race and it was just barely. We exchanged brief apologies since neither of us really knew whose fault it was anyways and then I proceeded to spend about 94% of the rest of the race swimming pretty much by myself. Within the first 1000m we spread out quite a bit and I never really spent any time in a pack.


Heat 1′s start

Sighting on this course was really hard for me. With all the sunshine that was rising up over the water and the buoys being really far apart I just couldn’t see them. Maybe I need to investigate prescription goggles, I have this problem way too often. The day before one of my friends described a swim she did as an easter egg hunt for little green buoys. Since this race was marked off with fat little orange bouys I kept thinking about one of my favorite Swedish words for this one… pumpajakt. It basically translates to Pumpkin Hunt. I found all my little pumpkins, but it wasn’t always easy. Luckily I did the boat tour the day before so I had a decent feel for what the course should be like, but it did stress me out a little to not be able to see where I was supposed to be going. Occasionally I would be able to see other swimmers and sight off of them, but as the race went on and we spread out that became less and less of an option.

My first length out to the 2500m mark was pretty rough. I wasn’t feeling so good and my stomach was really upset. I don’t know what set it off by I was cramping a bit and having a hard time finding a comfortable rhythm. I was really hoping this would subside since I had no desire to not finish a swim I had flow half way across the country for! After a little break at the supply boat for some water I started to feel better and able to just focus on my swimming. From here to the 5k mark was pretty much a blur. I hit 5k around 1:34 which was a lot slower than I was anticipating. I was thinking 1:25ish would be about right for me…. apparently not. I figured it was no big deal though since this swim was about completion not necessarily speed. I can worry about going faster at the next 10k whenever that may be.

At the 5k marker they had a boat with water and special needs bags if you had one. I passed on having a bag because I carried some gu packets on my person, but I really should have put some Gatorade or something up there. Water was good, but some sports drink would have been waaay better. Lesson learned. While I was there I saw my buddy Sully who managed to make it out to the race at the last minute. It was his first 10k as well and he was doing really good. We chatted a little bit while eating up some gu packets and then he took off for the second lap of his swim. I proceeded to have a sneezing fit. I don’t know what it is about fresh water lakes but I sneeze like crazy once I’m done swimming. Once I was done spazzing out I got back to business as well. I dolphin kicked underwater for about as long as I could stand it in an attempt to find some colder water (no such luck) and then got back to swimming.

I felt pretty good on this length. I was a little more confident on where I was going and spent a lot more time with my head down swimming without sighting so often. It was nice to take that stress off my neck for a while. As I started to fatigue a bit I made some variations to my stroke technique and pattern. Normally I just breath to the right side almost every stroke, but I spent a fair amount of time breathing left and occasionally switched to bilaterally breathing every 3 strokes. Little things like this were enough to change the dynamic of the stress on and in my shoulders and give them a little reprieve from the repetition of doing the same exact thing for hours.

At the 75oom mark I stopped at the boat for a little bit and ate the other gu packet in my suit along with some water. The volunteers on each boat were all really great. Friendly and positive… after all that time swimming by yourself it was nice to hear someone talking besides the voice in your head, and even better that they were telling you that you’re looking good and doing a good job!

Admittedly I started falling apart a bit in the last 2500m. I mixed in some backstroke to use some different muscles and I even did a little bit of butterfly just to move my shoulders in a new direction for a little bit. No matter what I did though I was dragging through the water. I could have really used some kind of electrolyte drink around this time I think. I was getting so hot and worried that dehydration would take me down despite taking in a bottle of water at each turn. As I got closer and closer to the finish I got more excited about the end but I couldn’t really get any faster. I had settled into a speed and that was all I had in me. As I neared the finish chute a few of us started to bunch up a little bit, this was the first time I’d been around other swimmers, that I could see anyways, in quite a while. I crossed the finish line at 3:23… not exactly the time I was looking for, but again I can’t complain. My pre race guess was 3:10, but when you factor in 3 stops to eat/drink I guess I wasn’t too far off of that.

Once I was done I floated over to shallow water where I could stand up and contemplated what had just happened. I just finished 6.2 miles in water under my own power… wow. The swim today confirmed two things for me… 1. I want to continue doing bigger and bigger swims, I enjoy the sense of completion involved in it. 2. I have lots of work to do to get there! Oh and if/when I ever do a majorly long swim it’s going to be in COLD WATER!!! This 80+ degree water thing is not doing me any favors. I’m excited to do some California swims in the next month, I should be much more comfortable in the Pacific than these hot inland lakes.

After the race we did awards and they had laid out some food for lunch. I nibbled at some stuff and drank whatever I could get my hands on. I was cooked and really needed the fluids. I managed to get a medal by default… 10th out of 10! Look out! I decided to look at it like this… I outlasted everyone in my age group :)

glorious...

Once the awards portion was done my next priority was food! I saw a White Castle on the way into the race and during the swim I had determined this would be the perfect post swim food. The nutritional validity of that statement is questionable, the the deliciousity of my lunch was off the charts. I devoured a big pile of sliders, it was magical. From there I hit the grocery store for some more water, Gatorade, some snacks and I may have accidentally picked up a couple beers too… I figured I deserved an adult beverage after that swim! I’m in Indianapolis until tomorrow afternoon and then flying home all evening. The only undetermined part of my weekend from here is whether I actually do something with my remaining time here in Indiana or just sleep off my 10k… it could go either way right now.

the start of heat number 1

July 17, 2010 | Tags: | 11 Comments »

2010 USMS 2 Mile Champs Wrap Up from Chris Greene Lake, Charlottesville, VA

**unofficial results are posted here

I had a great day out in a lake in the middle of the woods again, this is turning into a theme of my summer.  Fly to a town… drive to another town deeper into the woods and then go just a little bit further into the forest… hop in a lake… rinse/repeat as necessary. I started today with a 70 mile drive from Richmond out to Charlottesville and it rained pretty much the whole entire time. I was a little worried about this for a couple reasons… 1. I tend to not travel with a jacket in summer because I live in California and I’m not conditioned to rain actually occurring in summer 2. It felt like lighting was a very real possibility which is an event cancelling type of thing for an open water swim. An event cancellation would have really wrecked my day seeing as I only kinda came all the way across the country for it! Luckily after about 15 minutes of walking around on the beach the rain decided to stop, phew!

This swim was the USMS 2 Mile Cable Open Water Championships. A cable swim consists of a body of water containing a precisely measured course that’s physically anchored on each end to the bottom and connected with a rope or cable.  The course in Chris Greene Lake was a quarter mile straightaway marked by a rope with little buoys on it. This event is run in two heats, one counter clockwise and one clockwise. So basically you can pick to swim in the direction that’s better for your dominant breathing side allowing you to always see the cable and stay on course. Basically cable swims are daring you to fail at navigation, I don’t think anyone had an issue with it today. The one nuance that people who have done this swim before are all hip to but I was not while signing up is that you really want to get in on that first heat to beat the impending summer heat. If I make it back out for this race again someday I think I’m going to put that little tip into effect because I am not big on being out in the heat, especially when the water is already 84 degrees!

Even though I was in heat 2 I came out early to check out the lake and talk to people on the beach. A bunch of my friends were running around out there and quite a few people that I knew just online that I had never met in person. I also had a bunch of people recognize me from the USMS video I did not too long ago which was pretty cool. A big thank you to everyone that came up and said hi, it’s always good for me to meet new people while out on random beaches!

While watching the first heat I took the opportunity to get some video and cheer on my friends who were out there rocking the early heat. My buddy Chris (who we featured on the blog recently) laid down a really hot swim. He won the whole thing, broke the record for his age group (cable swims have national records because they’re precisely measured), and became a national champion for the third time this summer. I’d like to be that cool someday, but I have a lot of work to do to get there!

Around maybe 10:30 or so we started getting lined up for my heat, and at the same time the cloud cover started breaking up and the weather was working on getting hotter. The one silver lining for me was no caps required for this race! Awesome! The last thing I needed as a guy with no hair anyways was to wrap my noggin in latex to more efficiently cook in the heat so this was very welcome news. The heat was broken into waves of 10 based on speed. I was in the 3rd wave but I really shouldn’t have been given the speed I’ve been going recently and the way I tend to react to really warm water/weather. I managed to hang with the heat for half a length and then promptly fell backwards through a couple of the waves behind me. I wanted to try and hold pace with my wave a little longer but I could tell that would end very poorly for me.

On the way back for the first lap I got kicked by a spontaneous breaststroker. He got me right across the inside of my hand with a toenail… he got me so good it felt like he cut me! Also… how gross is that? I had to roll over and backstroke a few times just to make sure I wasn’t bleeding… I really didn’t want steaming hot lake water rolling around in an open wound for the next 3 laps. Luckily no cut, it just hurt… it faded out during the next 10 minutes or so… disaster averted.

Things started to spread out after about one full lap. I did my best to hang near the rope as much as possible. I didn’t want to swim more distance than I had to. There was still a little jockeying for position every once and a while coming around the turns but that was about it. As time went on my body got tighter and tighter in various spots. My calves and stomach were the ones most on the verge of cramping. Hooray dehydration. I’d work all the way up to almost cramping and then it would mellow out. Despite my best effort I apparently didn’t hydrate enough for this race.

At the end of lap 3 I got lapped by my buddy Evan and a few other fast kids. I wasn’t excited to get lapped, but at least it was by someone I like who was en route to winning the heat. Keep an eye on Evan’s site for his race report from the perspective of someone who actually wins these things!

Tomorrow I’m flying back to my own coast for a few days and then swinging back to the Midwest for a 10k in Indiana. I think this race was really good practice for that race in dealing with heat I’m probably going to be dealing with out in Noblesville. The only question I have is how cold will the ocean feel at home when I get back in this week!

July 10, 2010 | 2 Comments »

SLO Firecracker LCM Meet, Why Not?

small people butterflying

So this wasn’t particularly part of my plan for the summer, but I ended up at a long course meet just up the road in San Luis Obispo today. I knew it was going on but it wasn’t really even on my radar as something I wanted to do until late in the week. The Firecracker meet is a USAS meet that’s dual sanctioned to allow us old folks come out and play too. They used to do these as separate things, kids first then Masters. This made for a VERY fast Masters meet. Swim your event… get out… get back on the blocks for the next heat… you get the idea. Instead they’ve switched to interspersing Masters events between the kids which worked out pretty well. I was a little worried about the awkwardness of being a random large bald and bearded grown up in a sparkly jammer at a USAS meet, but it turned out to not be that big of a deal. There were maybe 10 adults there swimming and we were good for one men’s and one women’s heat of everything except the 50 free which was a 3 heat ordeal.

Warm up opened a little after 8 and I was one of the first people in the pool. I was kind of worried about getting in a decent warm up while being swarmed with small aquatic children, but luckily they designated a Masters only lane! That was the best thing I could have heard at 8am on Saturday morning! Eventually we got a few bonus swimmers in there from Cal Poly that weren’t swimming in the Masters heats but were old enough to mix in without any problems. Unfortunately once the warm up closed and the meet started there was no more Masters’ lane. Lane 0 was complete pandemonium. Swimmers from 5 to 85 duking it out in one long course lane. It was somewhere between an open water start and a water polo match with no ball. Craziness, I think Sinsheimer pool in SLO would be an epically awesome place for LCM meets if they just got a bonus 25 yard pool for warm up/down swimming.

All 4 50′s were offered today so I deck entered all of them to at least get an idea of where I am in LCM without a techsuit. Oh yeah… first pool meet without a techsuit today… I felt naked on the blocks. I swam ok, but it’s odd to not have my torso covered. So now the most technical part of my new race suit is the sparkles built into the sides of my Splish Jammer :)

sparkles make you faster, it's scientifically proven

We did the 50′s in IM order so we started with my favorite first, butterfly. I was on the blocks right next to my buddy James who I swim with sometimes at Kennedy in SLO. He’s in my age group and I know he’s faster than me in most things, but this was my best shot to win at least one event. Off the dive I felt pretty good although my dolphins didn’t seem to get as much traction as they do in a bodysuit. Not sure if that’s a perception or reality thing, but that’s how it felt. As we moved down the pool I got into a really good rhythm and could feel myself build as the race went on. I never saw any splashes in my peripheral vision which was a good sign that I was doing alright, I managed to shake James and win the men’s Masters heat. I swam a 30 point something which is less than a second behind my best LCM time from last year. Not bad for not prepping for sprints!

Next up was the 50m back… not a whole lot to say about this one… I think my tweet after the race sums it up best:

It’s true… my backstroke, not so good. I don’t know what happened to it between my teens and twenties, but I’m in need of some remedial assistance on this stroke. I just barely kept my 50m under 40 seconds, yikes.

About an hour later I was back in for the 50 breaststroke which came out about even with my backstroke! I don’t have the exact times, but I think they were within the same second. I was fairly happy with my breaststroke, I’ve only swam it once before in LCM and I was right around my best time. I had a really good start and a monster pull down. Unfortunately there was no turn for me to get in another one! Oh well. I finished just behind my buddy on this one and I think I was second overall in the men’s heat.

We finished with a 50 free and mine wasn’t so hot. I’ve been doing so much distance freestyle that it’s really hard to flip the switch and break into a full sprint right now. I swam about the same time as my 50m fly which either says something really good about my fly or really bad about my freestyle.

spent all day with my hood up trying to make my own shade... it was really sunny once that fog burned off!

Even with a few hundred kids running around we managed to get out of there in about 4 hours from the first event to the last which was pretty awesome. As much as I thought I might end up one of the only old people there today there was a decent group of us. Amongst the crowd there were some locals like me and James, Peter (who I know through work type stuff), and 80+ year old world record holder Frank who came up from Lompoc. We had a couple ladies from Southern California come up for the weekend to swim, and one guy like me who lives around here but swims for a far away team (my friend Cokie’s team up in Marin). We even had some parents with kids in the meet that wanted to get in on the action and were doing their first ever competitive races which I thought was very cool! I also got to meet the guy who writes the Crazy Swim Dad blog today… he wasn’t swimming but his kid’s team was there competing.

The meet continues on tomorrow, but I’m opting for salt water instead. I’m planning on hitting the beach in Avila and getting in some oceanic excitement. It should be extra exciting now that everyone is all a twitter with a story about a guy getting bit by a shark in Shell Beach! Ahhhh! Once you get past the headlines… a dude got bit on the foot by a four foot (reportedly) brown shark… it kinda sounds like he stepped on it. Not exactly a malicious unprovoked attack by a man eating beast… I’m not too worried about it, but I’ll probably be extra jumpy when attacked by pieces of ninja kelp tomorrow :)

July 3, 2010 | 4 Comments »

2010 USMS 3-6 Mile Champs Wrap Up from Lake Water Valley, Colorado

**Results for the 6k are now posted here

2 swimmers battling it out around a buoy

This morning I ventured out to Lake Water Valley just a little bit south of Fort Collins to hit up the USMS 3-6 Mile Open Water Championships. The race of the day was a 6k which isn’t really too much shorter than last week’s 4.4 Mile Chesapeake Bay Swim. I was a little worried not about the distance, but the general disposition of my shoulders. Towards the end of the Bay swim I started grinding a bit in my shoulders and I was worried that would return here. I had only swam maybe 1 mile since then because of a pool closure and travel time so I hadn’t really tested it out since that race. I was a little worried/curious about the difference swimming at altitude would have as well, but I don’t think it had too much of an impact on me… I’m just hoping this high altitude training helps me in my 125 yard fly race against Mike in my lap swim showdown later this week :)

meet staff getting prepped

When I got to the lake there was maybe only 10-15 people there. I wasn’t exactly sure how long it would take me to get there from my hotel so I erred on the side of too early. I took an opportunity to walk around and check out the lake and the little community that it’s set at the middle of. You basically have what I’m assuming is a man made lake with a island in the middle which is basically a small park. There were houses and condos being built on the far side of the lake and golf course on the near side. After a while people started to show up and at 8 they opened up check in. Pretty standard fare, numbered cap, goody bag and a body marking station. The one thing they did that was kind of interesting was stencil your number on you with big thick lines. One on your upper arm at the shoulder and one on your back. They put them all on the right side and I think that was because we were swimming a clockwise course, this way the official could read your number from shore. They posted an official at each buoy in a lawn chair to make sure we were all good kids and staying inside the course.

lake shore reflected in my goggles

As we got closer to 9 I made sure to go get in the water just to get used to what the lake felt like. Despite announcements of 70 degree water temps, I’m not buying it. It felt like 66-68 tops. The visibility in the lake was maybe 4 feet through the water, but there was a lot of tiny pieces of stuff floating around in it. I didn’t really swim swim while out there I just floated until they called us in for the pre race briefing.

At the start of the race the plan was to break it into 3 waves: Men under 45, Men 45 and over, and Women. I think the race was small enough they could have shot us all off at the same time together, but I will say this is probably the first open water race I’ve done with virtually no contact with another swimmer. I was in that first wave and well… most of it smoked me off the start. I was coming into this thing pretty fatigued and there wasn’t a whole lot of pep in my step that first lap. It also didn’t help when swimmers from the 2nd and 3 waves (each wave was 1:00 apart) started rushing past me. I knew there were and would be plenty of people behind me, but all I was seeing were the feet of all the fast kids.

buoy number 1

The way to the first buoy was reasonably easy to sight, but the 2nd buoy was essentially impossible. It was a long way to that next buoy and you just couldn’t see it. You basically had to guess and then course correct once you got close enough to actually see it. This course definitely could have used some intermediary buoys! The other exciting part of this leg of the course was it got really shallow down closer to the buoy. On that first lap I actually ran aground! Like on my belly with my hands straight out and feet in the air! Whoops! At least I wasn’t the only one, everyone I talked to at least got a few handfuls of sand in the course of each lap. The next leg was a little more guessing as to where the buoy was. Once you got about half way there you could actually see it. From there it was a straight shot to the bridge, which was very easy to see, and basically rinse repeat x 4.

The first lap was basically me finding my rhythm. I got pretty steady in lap number 2 and more sure of where I was going, but I was definitely feeling some grindage in the shoulder… not good so soon. At the first buoy on round 3 I stopped to eat a gu packet real quick. I grabbed the camera while I was at it and snapped a few pics/videos. While hanging at that buoy I saw my buddy Chris from the US Swim Foundation go cruising by… holy crap… I was getting lapped already. That was a bit of a wake up call. I stuffed my gu packet wrapper in my suit and started to make moves to the the next far away magical mystery buoy. I still wasn’t setting the world on fire, but I did catch a few people that were starting to run out of steam. On the way to the 3rd buoy on lap 3 I did like 4-500m of 1 armed fly drill. My shoulder was really getting pissed off at me and I needed to just move it a different direction for a while. Funny thing is I think I was going faster doing 3 strokes on each side!

The last lap was all a blur… my body was hurting, but I was running of the anticipation of actually being done! I think I’ve decided that I much prefer point to point swims, doing laps kinda sucks. You see the finish over and over again but you’re never done. I like being out in the middle of nothing knowing that the only way to go is to the finish because there’s no bailout point. Once I passed under the bridge for the last time I tried to launch into a bit of a gallop. I wanted to at least finish fast. I definitely went faster than I had been going, but I don’t know that it would actually classify as fast. The finish was in water and to not much fan fare. Those that were done were wandering around on the beach and in the parking lot and there were still a fair number of people in the water. On the beach I caught up with my friends Evan (read his race report here) and Chris who were both dressed and dried off already… each one was a national champion in their respective age groups for the second time this year! By the time I looked at a watch it was a little after 11 so I knew I at least kept my swim under 2 hours. I didn’t know what my actual time was, but I at least beat my secret goal time that I was keeping to myself until I beat it :)

random swimmer en route to the finish

About an hour later we got into awards and I got 2nd in my age group out of what appears to have been 3 guys total. No idea how I did overall though. People swam anything between 1:16 to 3:00, I came in around 1:54. Again not that fast, but considering the schedule I’ve been keeping I’ll take it!

After the race I went out to lunch with a group of 5 others which was a lot of fun for me. Besides Chris everyone at the table was new to me,  but swimming being the small world it is we all had friends in common. One even roomed with my coach at Nationals! When we were done there I made my way to downtown Denver. I figure my flight doesn’t leave until late tomorrow so I might as well stay in the middle of everything. First order of business was de-pond-scum-ifying myself and contemplating what to do about the super awesome cap line burned onto my head. With as much time as I spend swimming outdoors I thought I was impervious to that kind of stuff, but apparently not. Good thing I brought a hat! My hotel is right on the 16th Street Mall and I went wandering for a while on foot. I walked all the way down to the Capitol building and stumbled into the middle of a Gay Pride Festival. A little unexpected, but kinda fun. There were tons of people all dressed up, lots of music, people speaking, and it was a really beautiful day here in Denver (even if it was a little too hot for me). Tomorrow I’m going to bum around town for a while and then split for the airport in the afternoon. My next official race isn’t until July 10th and I think that’s a good thing. My body is pretty beat up and needs a moment to itself to recover.

View of the Capitol from my walk

June 19, 2010 | 3 Comments »
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