Event: Open Water Swim
Distance: 1 mile
Date: 7/15/06
Location: Crystal Lake, IL

After some good-natured teasing from my good friend Regner - who'd called to sign me up just 3 days before the race - and some much-appreciated encouragement from the Tri Blogger community, I decided to do this race in the neighboring town. It's an open water swim race with 1 and 2-mile options, billed as being a great training opportunity for triathletes. I hadn't swam a mile in over a year, and even then I'd only done it to see if I could. My workouts have been geared toward sprint triathlons and I'm only used to swimming a half mile, so I was apprehensive. Because this was a fairly informal race and sounded like a lot of fun I called Swim Coach Marcy and invited her to join the party - she was happy to sign on.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a full parking lot when I arrived at the race venue... I find comfort in numbers when I'm in open water. I peripherally noted the bikes hanging from many of the cars, but it wasn't until I was standing in line for registration that my sleepy brain made the connection to what that meant: I found them! I found all the triathletes! I'd say we comprised 8 out of 10 people racing, and many were Madison-bound. This quickly led to some great conversations, and it felt really freaking cool to be with my own kind somewhere other than at an actual triathlon.

At 6:45am it was humid and already approaching 80. A great day for a swim, but I was nervous about the water temperature because so many people were sporting wetsuits. Luckily, it just turned out they were triathletes testing their suits in open water. Had a brief moment of panic when one girl said she heard the water was 65, but she was quickly corrected by someone who said she's in this lake all the time and it's about 79. Phew!

Regner, Swim Coach Marcy and I goofed around to calm our nerves before we took a serious look at the course. Just as I was thinking the turnaround buoy looked impossibly far away, Regner - a former competitive swimmer who practically lives in open water - said it didn't look so bad. I was happy for him, but the looks he got from others nearby told me they were feeling more like I was.

I felt a surprising new emotion this morning as I contemplated the task before me: calm composure. I'm used to my heart racing just coming in view of a lake, and here I was, looking out at this impossibly huge lake, completely at ease with the fact that I was about to swim out to the middle of it. Not confident, mind you, but anything short of sheer terror is really quite an improvement.

SCM was panicky, tears welling up in her eyes and repeatedly questioning why she was stupid enough to sign up for this. I spotted the obvious pattern emerging - this is just how she acts pre-race - and didn't worry about it. As I expected, post-race she was happy and had so much fun she's excited to do it again next year. (Her intent to come back was reinforced when she later discovered she finished only 3 seconds off podium.)

I lined up at the back of the pack - there were about 100 swimmers total - and waded in when the gun went off. I was immediately left far behind by all by a lone breast stroker. About halfway to the turnaround I lost sight of even her.

The warm shallows extend pretty far and even a quarter mile out I had some uncomfortable weed encounters, so I swam for a shameful distance with my head out of the water. My neck was cramping and I felt slooooow, so to get going again without succumbing all-out weed-induced panic I resorted to my patented swim-with-eyes-closed technique. I only open them when I breathe and sight and it works just fine. For some reason I'm less freaked out when invisible tentacles caress me from below than when I can see them reaching for me, waving blindly in the dim water, at which point I panic, gasp for air and thrash around ineffectively.

Even though I'd been in a fairly decent state of mind, I calmed down considerably when I felt the water temperature drop a little and I knew I was in deeper, weed-free water. This is when I did my best actual swimming because I was able to concentrate on things like catch and pull and and rotation and kicking.

Because I swam a half mile at the Danskin last weekend in 22:07 I hoped I could pull this off in about 45 minutes. Even though that estimate was aggressively fast for me - last time I did a mile it took me about 63 minutes - I knew in the grand scheme of things it's ridiculous slow. But I knew I wouldn't be last to finish because the 2-milers had to do another loop.

As I neared the turnaround buoy I cheered a little bit because I had not yet been passed by any of the 2-milers. I expected to be, and was passed by the leader in just another minute or so, but it made me happy not to be lapped before I turned around. I was also happy to find I wasn't tiring after the half-way point as I'd feared. The only real problem was a nagging numbness in my left hand that I've never experienced before and couldn't shake off.

The rising sun made the return trip a challenge because I was too blinded to sight the buoys. It didn't help that the course had an arc to it. I ended up swimming slightly off course - maybe 30 yards wide - not long after I turned around. This was about the time the bulk of the 2-milers were lapping me, so I was happy to have swim caps to follow until I could see the buoys again.

This happens every time I swim in a lake, and I need to work on it before I move up to bigger triathlons: I always feel panicky when I start an open water swim, and as a result I tend to gulp air. This quickly leads to a painfully bloated stomach that impedes my ability to inhale fully. I have to stop swimming to get rid of it, but even with diligent effort I fail to expel all the air with my oh-so-ladylike burping method, and the rest invariably causes painful abdominal cramps within 20 minutes or so. I'm clearly feeling better about open water in general, so I'm hoping this problem swimming outside simply fades away with time, the way it did swimming inside.

It was an amazing feeling to come out of the water to the cheers of the friends who had taught me to swim. I was so relieved to be out of the water I forgot to check the clock, but Emily (friend with camera) told me it was around 48 minutes - a full 15 minutes faster than last time I swam a mile! I thought for sure I was the last miler to finish (it turns out I wasn't!), but there were still some swimmers in the water so we waited to cheer in the last of the 2-milers before heading home.

We all had a great time, and before everybody left we agreed to make it an annual event. My favorite part of the morning was heading out to the van and seeing that the triathlete contingent had turned the parking lot into a makeshift T1. I've already decided that next year I'll be right there with them, dripping all over my bike and making a brick out of it.

Results:
Michelle: 47:17 (PR), last in age group, 82 of 85 overall (AKA "Hey! I Wasn't Last!!")
John: 26:04, 3rd in age group (that's podium, baby!)
Marcy: 27:10, 4th in age group

Michelle Wood
July 2006