To start with, I went into this race with the goal of going out slow and staying slow throughout the race. I have never done the distance in open water or the pool so I wanted to see what it would feel like.

That said, this was way slow for me. The water was choppy but not prohibitively so. The problem was that I caught a gulp or two of water when I needed air in some bad spots. That resulted in me being dropped by the pack. I then had an issue on the return of lap one when a mile swimmer on her way out, and myself on the way in, locked up. I caught he bicep right in the nose and torqued my neck back a bit as neither of us saw eachother. I was dazed for a second or two and had to shake it off and get back into the flow of things.

By that time I had been dropped by the back of the pack and all hope of drafting was gone.

To further complicate thing my sighting wasn't as good as it usually is. Actually, I was sighting correctly but picking the wrong targets. I should have been sighting further down the course and swimming in a straight line, ignoring the buoys. Instead I kept the buoys directly on my right which caused me to keep to tight a line with them so I ended up swimming more of a U instead of a line.

Overall it was a good experince. No that I know I can swim the distance fairly comfortably I would go out about as hard as I did but then pick the pace up and hold onto the middle of the main pack. I didn't fight for position as hard as I should have and that resulted in me being spit out the back.

For a first 2 mile open water I was OK with how it went down. For the next one I'll go out harder and swim harder throughout.

From a performance standpoint the overall swim was bad. From a learning standpoint it was great.

Not much. I walked around for a bit. Met a few BTers, and then headed home.


Having never done the distance I was too conservative. My sighting should have been farther down the course, and I'm not trained for 2 mile swims as my swim volume is too low for that distance.


The event was a bit happhazard. It took them a bit to figure out I was pre-reged for it. There really wasn't a description of what was going to happen until just before the gun. Most of the competitors were asking eachother which buoy was which and was this a mass start or waves etc.

In the end it all turned out OK but it was kindof like a high school health fair kind of race.

I plan on doing it again next year though.