Swim 2.4 miles
(Photo by Julia)
It was a beach start, so everyone started walking down the beach into the water, deeper and deeper until about waist deep, then started swimming. I just followed the crowd. I was in no hurry. And when the people in front of me started swimming, I dove in and followed suit, bracing myself for the horror I'd heard about so many times, with the kicking and the biting and the clawing and whatnot. And I swam. Unmolested. I was confused. Where was the hitting? Where were the flailing limbs? I DEMAND THE WASHING MACHINE! But I was in my own little space, and nobody else was invading it. Granted, that didn't last, but for the first 2 minutes or so, not a single person hit me, and it was lovely. Even after that, it wasn't as bad as I expected. There was foot-grabbing (and my heart jumped every time someone grabbed at the chip strap on my ankle, and I feared losing my timing chip, which is not only my personal chip, but would also mean I would no longer be timed out there), there was elbowing, there was bodies close together and on top of each other, but I've experienced worse in smaller races. Which is not to say that it wasn't worse for others out there, but I got supremely lucky in where I ended up, evidently.
The choppy water added an extra element of challenge, of course. Sighting was more difficult because often you'd come up to sight and get a face full of wave. And the waves pushed and pulled people around against their will, so someone might suddenly stop in front of you without meaning to, because they were being pushed back by the water. But I just tried to view it as body surfing and enjoyed riding the waves up and down as much as I could, without letting myself think of the potential for sea sickness.
Since I wasn't having much difficulty with the pummeling, I had to experience my difficulty another way. Suddenly my mask started fogging up. Just a little at first, making it hard to see, then pretty much completely. I could barely see shapes, but it was nearly opaque. A little bit of panic set in. At first I just continued to swim, letting the bodies surrounding me guide me, assuming they were going the right way. Because when I tried to find the buoys, I could see nothing at all, except some flailing shapes around me. I realized that I was only 1/8 done with the swim, and I absolutely could not do the entire swim like that, and tried to figure out what to do. I remember Jay mentioning flipping over on your back and clearing your goggles, so I tried that. Except halfway over onto my back, I looked behind me and saw the shapes of a hundred people directly on my feet, about to plow over me, so I aborted my flip and kept swimming forward. I swam blind for about another minute before I finally just decided that I HAD to do something now, or the panic would really set in, so I swam a couple strokes of semi-breaststroke with one arm, kicking those surrounding me, and snaked the thumb of my right hand up into my mask from the bottom when my head was highest out of the water. I only had time to swipe my thumb across a small portion of my mask once, and then I pulled my thumb back out and started swimming again before I sank, or my head got low enough to let water into my mask when the seal was broken by my thumb. Victory! I could see again! I was SO relieved, and the panic immediately subsided and I started swimming again.
More pushing and shoving. Most people were obviously not touching me on purpose, they just ended up swimming too close and had trouble getting clear. It's amazing how hard it is to control your direction in those conditions, and it's very easy to get stuck on top of someone. I'm way too polite, and will go out of my way to gimp my stroke to avoid touching someone, or to slow down to avoid swimming up on top of someone. This is why I will never be a competitive athlete. :) But some people have no qualms about doing what it takes to make forward progress. One of those swam next to me for a while. He was determined to just crawl over everyone else in order to get to where he thought he should be. Which is fine. Do what you gotta do, sir. But if you do it in my personal space, I'm going to punch you. And I did. I was so annoyed with him after about a minute of him grabbing onto my legs, then my back, and pushing me down repeatedly, that I finally switched from an s-pull with my right arm, to a punching motion aimed directly at whatever part of him I could reach, which was his lower back and then his upper thigh. I doubt he even felt it or noticed, and it was the only time during the swim that my shoulder bothered me (which is cause for very much happiness) (er.. the fact that it was the only time, not the fact that it hurt that time), but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. Take THAT, ass hat. Er.. okay. Maybe that wasn't my most rational moment.
As a random note, at the pre-race banquet and speech, they had said the field was roughly 74% male and 26% female, and I hadn't really noticed the disparity until the swim. The men had white swimcaps and the women had navy blue caps (which isn't a very bright color in a blue lake, so I didn't really understand that), and every time I'd look up to sight, I was completely surrounded by white caps. Very rarely I'd be swimming next to another woman, and they were often much more polite than the men, though there were definitely exceptions. It was kind of a neat feeling, though, being part of the minority group.
Anyway. It felt like it was taking forever to get to the turnaround, and I remembered that feeling from Vineman, too. And I tried not to think about how when I got back to shore, I had to do it again, since this was a two-loop course. Be in the moment, only think about right now, the rest will take care of itself.
And then eventually I was at the turn-around buoy. I knew this because suddenly everyone in front of me came to a complete stop. I stopped too, looked up to see what was going on, and found hundreds of heads sticking up out of the water, all looking around like I was. This was the absolute worst congestion I've ever seen in the water. It was ridiculous. I think I said "This is ridiculous." Slowly, slowly, slowly we moved around the buoy, most people using some sort of dog paddle where you don't actually move any of your limbs much. There was no point in trying to swim, because there was nowhere to go. Then FINALLY things spread out enough so that you could be horizontal again, and people started to swim back to shore. Except unfortunately there was another buoy to go around before heading back to shore, and the people in boats and kayaks started SCREAMING, "GO TO YOUR RIGHT! GO TO YOUR RIGHT!" So we turned to the right and it was another mass of confusion and congestion and a little bit of back-tracking to go back around that buoy.
NOW we were headed back in. I allowed myself a small celebratory moment, cut short by someone clawing my feet, causing me to yell into the water "Cut your nails, you bitch!" Endurance events sometimes necessitate a lot of profanity. Sorry, mom.
The waves were working with us now, mostly, pushing us back toward shore, but also to the left. I had been hoping that, like with most triathlon swims, the congestion would ease up some as people spread out on the way back in, but that didn't happen. It was still crazy and packed, and I tried to concentrate on passing each buoy I could see ahead, hoping it was the last one, but it never was. Well, finally it was, about a million hours later. I swam past the person who stood up in waist-deep water, and swam until my hands grabbed sand, then stood up and staggered in the waves and made it upright. The timing mat we had to cross was right at the water's edge, so we just had to walk up onto the beach, across the mat, then a sharp turn and back into the water. Everyone else was walking, so I followed suit. As I crossed the mat, I glanced at my watch, not knowing what to expect. My original back-of-the-envelope guesstimation had me doing each loop in 45 minutes (based on my 40ish minute Vineman swim), for a total of 1:30something. When I saw the chop and the wind and the cold, I figured it'd be slower, but still hopefully not too close to the 2:20 swim cut-off. For lap one, my watch said 41:something. I was thrilled, and reentered the water with a smile on my face, knowing I could take my time if I needed to (mentally or physically).
Somehow it was STILL congested, and now I'd somehow ended up pretty far out from the buoys. I tried to swim diagonally, so I could make forward progress and get back close to the buoys at the same time, which I'm sure was annoying to everyone else. I was beginning to adopt an "everyone else be damned" attitude which was still countered by my temptation to sit up and say sorry every time I accidentally touched someone's feet. The nice thing about the congestion is that I was generally too busy trying to stay alive and afloat and move forward to think about how much distance I had left or how choppy or cold the water was. And then I was back at the turnaround buoy again, which was less of a nightmare than before, but still frustratingly congested. I made sure this time I cut to the right and went around the extra buoy, then headed back in to shore.
At this point, it FINALLY opened up a little, and I could swim like a normal person every once in a while. Someone very slowly went by on my right, and as their feet got to my head, I ducked in behind them and finally got some drafting in. It was a bit awkward with the waves pushing me forward into him, but I don't think I annoyed him too much. I have no idea if the drafting was beneficial to me in that particular situation, but damned if I practiced all that drafting to end up not using it at all.
About halfway back to shore, I let myself think about the fact that I was nearly done with the swim. I realized that very soon (with some delay, of course), a time would show up for me on ironmanlive, and people at home would know that I had started, and that I was making progress. I realized that I was doing an Ironman, and I had this big ol' grin on my face underwater, which let water into my mouth, but I was already so full of lake water it really didn't matter. And then I realized that I'd soon have TWO times up on ironmanlive, because while I figured it was possible, I couldn't come up with a scenario where I would make it out of the swim, but not make it through T1. TWO times up on ironmanlive! How cool is that?! I blocked from my mind any thoughts about anything after T1.
It seemed like each time I thought I was about to pass the last buoy, I'd see another buoy ahead. Then finally I was back at the shore. Again swam until I grabbed sand, then a lurching into a standing position, with arms out for balance, presumably looking very drunk. There were some folks standing in the shallow water, but they didn't seem to be there for pulling people out or steadying them, so I was on my own.
Walked up the beach and over a timing mat, and hit the split button on my watch. Glanced at it and saw 1:25ish, and was so happy that I'd come in under the time I had guessed I might get for a swim in GOOD conditions. I also gave a little mentally victory dance, because this was the longest swim I'd ever done.
