Alcatraz Challenge - Aquathlon

There were many things to remember at the beginning of this swim. They wanted all 533 athletes off the boat in 5 minutes, so we got herded out the two doors fairly quickly. Once we jumped, it was grab your goggles, fan your body out (to not sink too much), find KL and get the heck out of the way of the next jumper. We hit the water and started heading directly left to avoid an underwater hill of sorts that would put us into a good washing machine current. I got moving at a good clip to get into the right currents and tuned to look for KL, who had a bit of a problem getting into her groove. Since the Bay fills and empties every 25 hours, the currents are always pulling you one way or another, so we were told points to sight off of. After about 10 minutes of sighting, swimming, and looking for KL, I turned to her and said that I was going to do this swim again. I was having a total blast!! The water temp and animals were a total non-event, so I knew I just needed to keep sighting as I was told and keep my eyes on the kayaks. We just kept moving forward and navigating the sights while trying to swim over the 3 to 4 foot waves. Very soon...way too soon, I noticed the last sight point in front of me and right next to it was the swim finish on the beach. Hrm. Keep swimming, keep swimming. Soon, I noticed a kayaker chatting with Kathleen and then the tiny little rescue boat coming close to her. The kayaker told me they were repositioning her and to keep swimming, so that's what I did. Not 60 seconds later, I could hear my name...yep, I was getting swept too close to the bridge, too. Once we got in the boat, the nice rescue man told us they were repositioning a ton of people and that they must have pushed us off the boat at full ebb. Sure enough, a ton of people had to either swim back "upstream" or swim to the beach and run back up to the chute to transition. They dropped us back into the water and KL and I took off swimming again, finally getting out of the water after over an hour in it.

We were told to keep each sight at 1 o'clock in relation to our nose. I think not doing that combined with the full ebb out to sea got us pushed way too far west. Next time I will try to sight better and swim a bit harder.

Took my time, as Kathleen's friends and family (whom I had not yet met) were at the swim finish cheering us on. I took time to shake hands, give hugs and thank those I could see cheering for us.

Not a danged thing. I was having FUN!

Again, just a ton of fun here. We kept things evenly paced as much as possible and even stopped in the middle of the bridge to look at Alcatraz Island to see what we'd just accomplished. So very impressed with our pace, given all of the uphill we did, but maybe we were pushed on by everyone yelling GO GREYHOUNDS at us while running! That was so friggin cool! The last 1/4 mile, KL told me she did not have a sprint left in her, which was true until her friend ran up on us and said "you call that running?" Off she went with me kicking it in to catch up to her. We ended up sprinting in the last hundred yards or so and her cheering section was there, yelling for both of us. Really, such an amazingly cool experience.

Again, nothing. I had so much fun doing this.

A picnic at Crissy Field with many new friends! Later, we hit the Japanese spa and I got a foot exfoliation and massage. YUUUMMMMMM


This was an extremely well organized race. We were told there were 700 racers, but only 533 boarded the ferry, yet everything went off without a hitch through the whole thing. There had to be 50 kayakers, 10 jet skis and several boats, plus Coast Guard on hand watching the swimmers and making sure everyone was safe. I SO recommend doing this race if you're fairly comfortable in open water.