Holy Lord. For this swim, wetsuit = DQ, so I swam without a wetsuit. All I had was my nice little drag suit which I discovered has a hole in the crotch (luckily I was wearing a speedo underneath). I was expecting to be supplied with a cap... but wasn't. All other open water swims and tri's I've done have supplied caps, primarily for safety reasons, but there were no caps today, and I don't have one of my own. So needless to say, I lost a lot of heat through my head.

At the start we ran in and I was instantly shocked by the cold. Try as I might I couldn't breathe until I rounded the first buoy, when I finally started to calm down a bit and "warm up." Then it was pretty much just a swim in really cold water. It was a small field so there wasn't much jostling for position or catching those who went out too fast and the like. I hung with this one woman for about half way but after a while she dropped me. Not like a bad habit, but enough to beat me out of the water. It was so damn cold and never really warmed up. In fact, in spots it got even colder. Although I couldn't really get to a warm spot in my head, I knew it would be warmer once I got out and there wasn't much further to go, so I just kept going and finally made it to the last buoy, made the turn in to shore and almost ate it trying to "run" in from the surf. My legs were so cold they hardly worked. I probably could have swam faster if it was a little warmer, but oh well. All I know is that surf torture and Steel Pier ain't got nothin' on me when I get back to training.

There was really not much I could have done differently. There were a couple of instances where I thought I could have put out a little more, but my mind was going numb, let alone the rest of my body. So whatever.

Wrapped my towel around myself and put a hoodie on. Got to the locker room and took a nice hot shower then grabbed a hot chocolate. Then drove three and a half hours back to San Diego.


IT WAS FRIGGIN' COLD.