Open Water Swim is Finished!!!

Now, that was an experience. I thought that swimming 4.4 miles was going to be a challenge but I did not realize how mentally challenging it was going to be. We (John, Jason and myself), went out in the first wave with the slower swimmers to try and avoid the individuals that were actually at the race to win. Our philosophy was just to finish....a feat we all accomplished! However, I did not realize how fatigued I would become with about 1.5 miles remaining. The first mental blow was when five yellow capped swimmers (the second wave finally caught me)....I was leading the race up to that point. These swimmers blew by me like I was standing still! So, I decided to "float" a little bit, do some backstroke and regain my composure. That was stupid. For any of you that have ever done a marathon it was like slowing down to walk with only three or four miles left. It took quite some time to get moving again and get back into the rhythm (what was left) of my stroke. When I finally turned the corner for the last 800 yards I was thinking to myself..."finally". That 800 yards seemed to last an eternity. I tried to muster up one last charge to make it to the finish. I was fortunate that the young lady that eventually won for the women was next to me. I went stroke for stroke with her to the finish and eventually pushed her out of the way running up the shoot to finish ahead of her (of course I did not push her out of the way) but managed to touch bottom before her and out run her to the finish line. I did win the race for all of the swimmers in the first wave but ended the day 57th overall. Not too shabby for 700+ entrants. John ended up finishing 169th and Jason 209th. Jason exclaimed as he exited the water, "I will never do that again." I think I will take some time to reflect on that.

The one thing I did realize was it was not the race that I was looking forward to but the opportunity to spend some time with some old college teammates. We had an opportunity to spend a few days together before the race talking about the "good old days" when we were in college but also catching up with our new lives as professionals, fathers and husbands. I think that was the real reason we did the race, not to prove that we could do it, but to be able to spend time together as friends. Here is the link to the results enjoy. https://www.lin-mark.us/results_files/bay4409.txt Hopefully the pictures come out as well.



Dave