Swim

I was practically bouncing up and down in the starting chute trying to keep loose. We all lined up at the back until the previous wave went off and then walked up to the start line. The swim course was U-shaped and went straight out about 500 meters, took a 90 degree turn to the left for another 500 meters, then a final left turn for about 500 meters to the exit. There were big orange inflatable buoys every 100 meters; yellow buoys marked the turns. You basically wanted to hug the buoys and keep them on your left at all times.

When writing up my race plan I included some goals for each leg, just a time or pace that I thought I could hold in the best of all possible scenarios. I figured if I met those goals I would be very, very happy with my overall time. For the swim it was 27:00 for 1500 meters which was reasonable based on my best continuous swim times in Sunday practice. I would be slowed down in the open water by running into people, picking my head up to sight, and generally not swimming in an exact 1500 meter straight line, but the buoyancy of the wetsuit is supposedly good for 1-2 minutes over the course of an Olympic distance swim.

At the start I lined up in the second row on the inside hoping to be ahead of the pack for the first 100 meters or so to avoid getting kicked. Before I knew it the horn sounded and I was running into the water. Two dolphin dives in the shallows and I was swimming out! I only found a couple guys in front of me before the first buoy but was able to split between them and to the left of a 3rd guy to find some open water pretty quickly. Sighting on the first 2 buoys went well; I pushed a little left heading to the 3rd but was able to correct. Around the 4th buoy before the final turn I ran into some poor woman treading water from the wave that started 10 minutes before mine. I asked if she was OK and she said "yes, she was just catching her breath" but looked a little panicked. There was a lifeguard in a kayak not 30 feet away watching us from inside the buoys. They only pulled one person from the water this year after 30 or 40 the year before in pretty terrible conditions.

After the first turn I looked up to sight on the next buoy and get my bearings. It looked really far away, but I figured my eyes were playing tricks on me so just put my head down. Turns out I went about 20 degrees to far on the turn and had sighted on one of the buoys on the next leg! I soon felt some tapping on my feet and though it was someone drafting off of me but it was a kayaker tapping me with his paddle to let me know I was off course and inside the buoy line. Thanks, guy! After that little detour I straightened out and finally found my groove (it takes me 600 meters or so to really warm up in the pool and get my breathing steady). I had been taking breaths on one side for most of the first leg so it felt good to settle into an alternate-side rhythm and go a little straighter. At this point I started passing people from the previous waves in greater numbers (or rather running into their feet). Some people will literally swim over people in their way but that seems like too much work besides a really crappy thing to do; I just went around except for one guy who crossed my path at literally a 90 degree angle. I think he was well inside one of the buoys and had to swim back out to get on course. I basically hit him broadside while breathing to the opposite side. We stopped and he said "This sucks!" and I went on my way.

Somewhere around the last turn I passed Liz; she saw me but I didn't see her. Ran into lots more folks from the waves 2 and 3 ahead of me at this point but I didn't think much of it. The swim exit was a set of metal stairs attached to the breakwater leading up to a short run to the transition entrance. They have helpers on the stairs to grab your hand to make sure you don't fall back in. It's a short 50 yard dash under a temporary pedestrian bridge where the grass had turned into one huge mud puddle. Gross! I wanted to keep my cap but it flew out of my hand as I stripped it off. No way was I going to stop and get it! There was a water station just outside transition so I grabbed two cups: one to get the salt water out of my mouth, another to dump over my head to get it out of my hair/face. The timing mat for the swim split is right as you cross into the transition gate. I punched the split button on my watch and saw 25:17. Wow! That was way faster than I had expected and a huge confidence booster. I jogged at a quick pace towards my bike rack while getting the top half of my wetsuit down to my waist.