Venice Beach, California
This year I tackled the 10k distance. That is 6.2 miles of swimming. This race and this victory will hopefully validate any open water racing entry requirements I chose to attempt to qualify for in the future. In other words, this race and result on my open water swimming resume, opens a lot of qualification doors for long distance open water swimming. I put in a lot of training hours. In fact I was adding up training miles for last week and I swam almost as many miles as I have run this month. I didn’t swim as much as I should have, but apparently it was enough. My shoulders really started to hurt most of the last hour and especially the last mile.
Alyssa stayed with us and woke up at
4:00 a.m. to help drive Christian and I to our start points in the morning. I
was very happy she decided to help us. I knew she would be at the finish line,
so throughout the race I pushed and prayed for strength. I always want to do my
best. But I was exceptionally motivated in this race because Alyssa
would see me do this race and I wanted her to be proud of me. I swam hard
asking for help because she was on the shore and would see me come out of the water. Honestly the only reason I probably won this race is because I knew my little girl would be at the fininsh line.
I am not going to lie, 6.2 miles is
a long way to swim. The difference between the 2.4 I did the first year and the
4.8 I did the second year did not seem that big, but there is a big difference
between 6.2 and the 4.8. Maybe it is
because I only did training swims up to 3 miles, but those last miles get hard
on the arms, and especially the shoulders. I felt strong from a cardiovascular
standpoint, but the shoulder muscles were beginning to get very tired and sore
towards the end. When I checked the results I couldn’t believe it, I had won my
age group. I came in second in the two previous years in both swims. The 1st
place guy was 9 minutes ahead of me last year. The 10k swimmers all wore white
caps and were easy to spot out there. I kept chasing those white caps ahead of
me towards the end of the race, hoping it would be enough. Apparently a lot of
the 10k people seem to fade towards the end. My body is used to hard
cardiovascular stress for up to 6 hours from doing all these 70.3 races this
summer, so 3 hours does not stress my cardiovascular system. The swimmers out
here got pretty thin towards the end. We
have to come in every 1.2 miles and time in. Going in and out of the surf is
the hardest part of the race. On my last stage I was pretty much all alone out
there.
Last year I had great drafting the whole race, this year I had none. I drafted off one guy for maybe 10 minutes, and then he got to slow. Christian wants to do this race again next year. He swam the 1.2 mile distance. Today was his 13th Birthday. I am not sure if I want to do this race again next year. One good thing about the timing of this race is that in Arizona the months of July and August are so miserably hot to bike and run in, that it was nice to have an indoor swimming focus to keep me busy. I may consider doing the race for that aspect alone next year. It gives me an alternative focus to keep me in shape during the unbearable months of summer here in Arizona.
Alyssa took this
picture:
