Saturday, July 10, 2010

Swim For (Your) Own Life

Happy 40th to me!! Today was my 40th endurance event. Woot! Well, sort of...

It was Maryland Swim 4 Life day, with the biggest decision being to swim 3 or 4 miles. Yes, there were thunderstorms, but I couldn't control those. With the help of my DC Tri peeps, I decided on 4 miles. We just had to wait for the storms to pass.

Shannon, Carolina and I sat around my car waiting for the race to start. It was raining and very humid, so of course we were fogging up the windows. We were talking about this and that and
Shannon says "Where did this a$$ come from??"
Carolina sat up super fast from her nap in the back to look out the window "Where?!?!?"
Us, laughter. Carolina missed the first part of the conversation and was expecting to see a hot guy, an interesting speedo - nothing. Just funny.
This was followed by a bass boat going by painted with a camouflage design. Shannon, again with the great one liner "That's a nice boat, too bad I can't see it because it's camouflage."
Aaahhh, the humor we have on little sleep before a race.

It looked like the storms cleared during the pre-race meeting; however another bolt of lightning came. Once the Coast Guard cleared the river, we turned in our timing chips and decided to call it a day. However, it cleared up quickly and the race director decided to shorten the swim to a 1 or 2 mile swim. After some prodding, Carolina and I ran back to get our chips, and I was in the water.

The first 0.5 mile, 18 minutes. Not too bad, as I was going into the current. The second 0.5 mile took FOREVER! The rain started, I was getting passed by all the 3 milers - who had yellow caps, the same color as the buoys. That meant it was even harder to sight. Boo! Total 1 mile time... 42 minutes. That's very slow for me.
After the turn around, the next 0.5 miles, 11 minutes. And my over all finish time: about 1 hour 3 minutes. YAY!

Given the conditions, no wetsuit, and actually having to swim for my life (for fear of swimming in a river with thunderstorms in the area...), it was a fun day for a great cause.


AND, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAREN!!

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