First Swim Meet Swim in the Books
I definitely should have done this race last year.
This race was so chill and welcoming that I'm really disappointed with myself that I didn't participate it in last year. It would have provided such a great foundation for open water swimming prior to my first jaunt during my first Olympic distance tri.
In fact, even during this swim, it took me several minutes before I felt comfortable.
The race is organized in waves by swim time. I estimated very poorly and put 30 minutes for my time. I was not the only person that put this very general time. Out of the 400 or so participants, I'd hazard to guess that a full third put 30 minutes as their swim time.
The swim accommodated wet suits, but just barely. The lake temperature was 77.6° and the cutoff was 78°. In fact, the two-mile swim that immediately followed the one-mile swim that I participated in did not allow wet suits.
As mentioned, there were multiple waves of swimmers. They had the racers go over the either the wet suit or non-wet suit timing mat and then swim out to the starting line. We then treaded water there until the gun went off and we were off.
For the first five or so minutes, I was breathing every other stroke. This is the same thing I did during the Giant Acorn triathlon. I eventually forced myself to calm down and swim at a nice even pace and concentrate on my breathing. Once I was able to do that, the rest of the race was much more pleasant.
While this was a race, I did not treat it as such. For me, it was more of a learning experience. I felt comfortable sighting, I swam relatively straight, and I got my breathing under control. I'm really looking forward to running the Giant Acorn again and see how much I can improve my swim time there.
In this race, I could have picked up my pace some, but I simply don't have enough experience to know how hard I can push myself for these longer distances - it's amazing the differences between pool and open water swimming.
I'll do this race next year for sure, hopefully with my wife, if we can get a babysitter for the event.
This race was so chill and welcoming that I'm really disappointed with myself that I didn't participate it in last year. It would have provided such a great foundation for open water swimming prior to my first jaunt during my first Olympic distance tri.
In fact, even during this swim, it took me several minutes before I felt comfortable.
The race is organized in waves by swim time. I estimated very poorly and put 30 minutes for my time. I was not the only person that put this very general time. Out of the 400 or so participants, I'd hazard to guess that a full third put 30 minutes as their swim time.
The swim accommodated wet suits, but just barely. The lake temperature was 77.6° and the cutoff was 78°. In fact, the two-mile swim that immediately followed the one-mile swim that I participated in did not allow wet suits.
As mentioned, there were multiple waves of swimmers. They had the racers go over the either the wet suit or non-wet suit timing mat and then swim out to the starting line. We then treaded water there until the gun went off and we were off.
For the first five or so minutes, I was breathing every other stroke. This is the same thing I did during the Giant Acorn triathlon. I eventually forced myself to calm down and swim at a nice even pace and concentrate on my breathing. Once I was able to do that, the rest of the race was much more pleasant.
While this was a race, I did not treat it as such. For me, it was more of a learning experience. I felt comfortable sighting, I swam relatively straight, and I got my breathing under control. I'm really looking forward to running the Giant Acorn again and see how much I can improve my swim time there.
In this race, I could have picked up my pace some, but I simply don't have enough experience to know how hard I can push myself for these longer distances - it's amazing the differences between pool and open water swimming.
I'll do this race next year for sure, hopefully with my wife, if we can get a babysitter for the event.
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