7am, Pensacola. The Bay Bridge stretched out for 3.3 miles awaiting us fools to swim the length. I did meet one BTer there and we chatted during the pre-race nerves. It started a bit late since they put timing chips on us (still not sure why). Anyway, the water was 76 degrees and quite nice. Much saltier than last year, but cooler, as well. Only one yahoo decided to wear a wetsuit.

Anyway, we jumped in and were off. I ended up behind a group of three girls/women. They got in a bit before the start and I ushered them to get in front of me - they were college age and had their team swimsuits on. Auburn. Oh yeah - like that's fair. I wanted to ask how many Olympic medals they had between them. As it turned out I passed two of them along the way. Saw the other one until about 2.5k and she pulled away.

Ended up being a pretty lonely race. After the initial crush I passed one guy and one of the girls at 1k and the second girl at 4k or so. Never saw anyone else. I was definitely moving better than last year, though I was having some physical issues. I pulled a small muscle in my left shoulder at some point and was getting a side stitch in the other. I managed to ignore those and plod on. The last 1.5k or so got really hard for some reason - I was trying to avoid sighting as it seemed I was really slowing every time I looked up. The looking up was also tightening my legs and giving my abs fits. I felt like an 80 year old at this point.

About 1k to go I start to get my (now typical) calf cramp issues - my left was itching to cramp and I kept it as loose as I could. Pretty successfully until the last little bit.

I rounded the dock and headed for home (last 250y or so) and made my one big mistake of the race. Once the water was about waist deep I decided to dolphin dive the rest of the way (it is typically faster than swimming). The instant I pushed off both calves lock up solid. I came to a dead stop in pretty excruciating pain. There really wasn't anything I could do about it, so I just put my head down and sprinted the rest of the way in. When I ran out of water, I crawled up the beach and over the line.

#######' embarrassing. But I did finish 6 seconds ahead of the gentleman who wore the wetsuit. My kid has some great pictures of me in pain crawling across the line. I need to figure out how to tactfully delete those - he's proud of them.

Final time: 1:29:32 1 minute slower than last year. Huh - that initially sucked until I saw that all the top times were about ten minutes slower than last year. Winner last two years was 1:05 and 1:08. This year was 1:20. So maybe not so bad. People talked about currents, but I never feel those. Makes sense, though. So this year I was 9 minutes behind the winner - last year was 20.