Open Water Dream

I went back to my parent's house this weekend. This is the house that I grew up in on Lake Tyler in northeast Texas. They live at the end of an inlet off the main lake. Well, seeins' how I'm a triathlete and all, I thought, "what a great chance to get in some open water swimming!" So I did. I started at their dock, and began swimming down the inlet, towards the open lake. I went, oh, about 500 meters - it was about 9 minutes of swimming so the distance is a pure guess - then I was at the last dock, so I turned around. There were two girls on that dock, and they asked me where the heck I was going. I guess they had never seen a guy in a gold swim cap come swimming up out of nowhere. A couple of docks down the line, a guy told me that he lost $2 on me, because he bet his buddy I would swim out to the buoys that mark the beginnig of the inlet. I made it all the way back, then rested for a minute and swim halfway out and back again.

I just realized how nice it is to have a giant pool in your backyard! I mean, I got a 30 minute swim workout in 30 MINUTES! All I had to do was walk down to the lake. On Sunday, I had done a 42-mile bike ride, and when I got home, I swam out and back for about 5 minutes just to cool off. What a joy that was.

The further point here is that if any of you have ready access to a lake, take advantage of it. It helps immensely to have swum in open water in a non-race, non-pressure situation to get a feel for swimming straight without a lane marker, sighting, seeing the tip of your hand disappear into the darkness (maybe), etc. Kinda makes me want to move back to good ol' Whitehouse, Texas...