I ended up on the inside track which was a mistake. I tend to veer to my right in OW so I kept finding myself slightly to the right of the buoys which was only a problem once the leaders made the turn and were swimming back at me. DOH! I think I had two low points in this race. This was the first one. Unable to get myself to swim to the left, the leaders already passing me on their way back in and going through that initial fatigue I feel in all three sports but seems the worst in swimming. I finally forced myself left enough to get a swimmer on my right. Oh, did I forget to mention that my bilateral breathing needs work? So I get the swimmer on my right and I notice that she is doing breast to sight for a few strokes then switching to the crawl then back and forth. I'm able to barely catch up when she is sighting and then almost lose her when she switches. A plan is hatched! Unfortunately I lose here in the turn, but at least I've made it this far and I'm through the initial fatigue period. Now I'm into the regular fatigue. Yeesh. The back half of the first lap was only slightly more fun than the first half. I couldn't find anyone to sight off of and how people draft is a mystery to me. I keep thinking I see bubbles from someone's feet in front of me and after a minute of thinking I'm drafting I realize it's bubbles from my own hands entering the water. For a while I kept sighting off of a guy swimming to my right. I chuckled to myself when I realized he was so far to the right he was swimming into the path of the oncoming swimmers. Then I looked up and I was too! Serves me right for that little chuckle. Swam quickly and sharply to my left and continued on. They really could use smaller buoys in between the bigger ones to help us out, couldn't they? Four buoys over 1/2 mi. distance doesn't seem like a lot. As I arrive at the first marker to turn and begin the second lap two thoughts are fighting for attention in my mind. First, should I stop and wave and yell to my family on the beach so they know where I am? After all, I'll be swimming for over an hour, what's ten seconds to give 'em a shout out? They got up early and dragged themselves over here (Jen is here with the kids, too) so they deserve a little love, right? The second thought is that the problem with an out and back 2 lap course is the temptation to not. Do the second lap, that is. I'm really thinking about it. I'm wondering if I've bitten off more than I can chew and would it really that bad to say I did 1 mile? I was considering switching my registration to the 1 mile swim anyway. This was the second low point I mentioned earlier. I decide on issue #1 that if I can touch here I'll jump up and wave and shout. After making sure nobody is right behind me I stop and try to touch bottome. Nope. I start swimming again. I'm afraid if I just yell and wave without it being absolutely clear I'm just saying hi that the boats will come in to save me. Issue #2 is decided for me when I think about having to stand in front of my fellow BT'ers in this race and tell them I wimped out. Forget it. I'm already around the turn and headed back out again I may as well suffer through and finish. I'm almost done, anyway (not really, but that's what I'm telling myself). I decide to try to re-implement my strategy I discovered on the first leg of the swim. Find someone who swims a little faster than me but spends energy to sight. Put them on my right, and sight off of them. I find someone and this works for a while. Then, again, I realize they are too close to the other side. I'm swimming on the correct side, but just barely and I'm getting too close the drifters crossing the line coming back. As I lean to my left on my next stroke, opening up my chest, someone coming the other way barrels right into my body. They slide right past and we both keep going as if nothing happened. Had I not leaned to my left I'm assuming we would have cracked heads. Unbelievable. This convinces me that I'm going to spend the rest of the race WAY outside. Much like an accident with a car, it doesn't matter if I was in the right place. Right and hurt is still hurt. So I veer WAY left. While sighting I think back to something my brother said on the beach before the race. He was talking about how far away the last bouy looked and he was amazed. Here I am having swum quite a while on the second leg out and I'm thinking it looks just as far away. I'm thinking "If you think that buoy looks far away from the beach you should see how far away it looks from halfway there!" This thought carries me for a while as I flounder toward the final turn. I wish I could swim like a flounder. I could swear the second half of this leg was somehow lengthened. Maybe they moved the marker. I finally reached the turn and head for home. There's a guy in a black and red wetsuit I've been sighting off of for the last couple hundred yards. He's muscular and looks like a good athlete so I decide I want to beat him in. I'm way to the outside but sighting off of him near the middle for another couple hundred yards when I decide I want to get out of my "comfort" zone and really push it the rest of the way in. I pick up the pace a little and move more toward the middle. I come up on a guy. He's too close the inside for my taste so stay to his left. I'm thinking I'll get in front of him and then veer inside. When I get next to him he speeds up a little and matches me. I concentrate on rotating properly which always speeds me up a little. This turned into a little game with us. This is going to sound like a corny statment, but this was by far the best part of the swim and to me is the essence of athletic competition. We were pushing each other, making each other swim faster. There was no animosity, but neither of us would give an inch. We swam no more than 1 foot apart for most of the last 1/2 mile. It was amazing. He'd get up to where I was looking at his waist, then I'd get up a little, but that was it. Neither one of us could clear the other. I don't know who the guy was, and after the race I couldn't find him. I'll explain why in a minute. So the two of us are battling it all the way in. We've smoked Mr. Muscles. I've changed my goal from beating this guy next to me to just maintaining this pace we've established. We've now been doing this long enough that there is no point in "beating" the other guy because we are too equal, and both probably going harder than we can maintain. He's got one advantage, the inside track. He's angling too far to the outside and eventually I wonder if he knows he needs to turn right toward the beach for the finish. I guess I cracked first, but I paused for a moment to let him get in front and cut behind him to angle toward the beach. He corrected just after that. I tried to catch back up to him on his right side but I had nothing left for sprinting and could not make up any ground. I followed him in about 6 ft. behind. As we got closer I could see the bottom and then see it getting closer. I should have continued swimming until my hands touched the bottom which is what I did at the sprint and worked well there. Lesson learned. Another lesson learned is this. When you spend an hour swimming your body is not ready to walk right away. I put my feet down and tried to stand up. I say tried because my calves and inner thighs on both legs immediately cramped/locked up. Add to this some extreme disorientation and I fell over to my right. I veer to my right, I might as well collapse to my right. I put my hands down to steady myself and tried again. My right leg loosened up enough to at least move it so I hobbled/fell/stumbled/weaved the rest of the way in. Throughout all of this I completely lost track of the guy in front of me so any thoughts of talking with him were lost. Arrrrrgh, the pain. I hobbled across the finish, still cramping. Jen was there with my daughter who had run up to the gate and was jumping up and down waiting for me. I couldn't pick her up so I leaned down and grabbed her in a bear hug and just rolled/fell to the ground with her on top of me. Took me 20 minutes to wash all the sand out of the wetsuit but it was worth it. After a minute of laying there I was able to stand without cramping. That was nice. Said hi to all the family, kissed Jen who was so happy for me and headed for the showers.

I need more experience sighting and drafting so I'm better at both, but as far as what I'd do different for THIS race, only one thing. I should have started to the far left instead of the far right.

Warm down was hectic. Tried to eat and drink something, clean up, talk to Laura and Chris, keep an eye on my kids, talk to my family and not fall over all at the same time. It was pretty much a blur. I remember asking Chris if he won, only half joking. He commented that the course was short by about 5-6 minutes. A lot of other people said the same thing. The girl who has won it the last two years came in 6 minutes faster than her usual time so I guess that seals it. I'll take 1:07 vs. 1:01, considering I did a 1.5 mi. in the pool the previous weekend that took me 1:05. I know the course couldn't have been THAT short.


I could say training, but it wasn't that I didn't train enough for this. It was that I picked a race that was beyond what my training has me ready for. Does that make sense? I wanted to push myself to see what I could do and I did it.


This is a pretty good race. Checking in could be run better and course the right distance would be nice. My wife mentioned it was odd there were no drinks/snacks set up. I thought it was odd too, although I had brought my own and didn't need anything. It was fun to do something right in my town. We have this swim and we have a half-marathon. We should have a tri. We could put on a good one, I'm thinking.