Great Bay Swim Challenge 4.4 miles.

This was the farthest I've ever had to swim. Pretty neat race, from Sandy Point State Park beneath the Bay Bridge to the other side.

Crazy mass start, took the first mile or so to spread out and have plenty of room. Held pretty good for the first mile and still felt strong after mile 2. Pushed through the third mile, pretty much on pace with mile 2, right at 30 minutes. Things started to fail after that. I think the current started to play a factor and my spotting started to fail. For the fourth mile, I found myself on the north side of the course, and had to swim against the current to get towards the finish. The final .4 miles was the LONGEST I've ever imagined. The finish beach seemed like it was going to take forever to reach. At the end of the day, I made it across. I was hoping to pull the swim off in 2:15, but my ego probably got the better of me. I'm pretty happy to finish, especially since I did not really train specifically for this. A bit more pool time likely would have made a huge difference. Shoulders are pretty sore, and need to remember my body glide next time, underarms got pretty chaffed from the wetsuit. Overall happy with performance. It was definately hard to swim for that long - boy would I love to see video of my form in the final mile :-). My race plan was to go smooth for the first 2 miles, then try to focus on picking up the pace for the final two. This didn't work too well. First mile was fasted, on par with my PR for a mile. Faded off for the next two miles, right around 30 minutes each. I wanted to hump the fourth, but either fatigue, bad navigation or the combination got the better of me. That final .4 miles just took forever. I did not stop the whole way, focussed as much as I could on key points of my form. Good things I think were breathing - kept steady and calm and felt comfortable the whole race.

Now I can say I've, driven across, run across, boated under and even swam under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge!

One interesting point - I wore my HR strap, average HR was 133 - zone 1 pretty much the whole time.

For me, I was happy to be able to say I finished. The competitive side of me, would like to finish higher in the pack - but realistically, I don't have the time to focus on the swimming. Better technique and more practice would likely have improved my swim. Endurance was my definate limiter, especially considering workouts were 2 / week of about 2000 yards.