Finally it was our turn! We waded into the water thigh deep. It wasn’t a treading water start after all - I was a wee bit disappointed.
I kept squeezing my goggles tighter and tighter and ducking under to check them. When they work they work great with no issue, but every once in a while they seem to leak and leak during a swim. I yanked them so tight I had soreness all around my eye sockets for the next two days. But guess what? No leakage.
10, 9, 8…the crowd counted. Finally the airhorn!
I tried to focus on moving veeerrry slowly at first, like a fellow triathlete had tipped me off to do. There was a lot of wave action at first from all the other swimmers. I just focused on swimming. Occasionally I would bump into someone or they me. In the past I would have popped up to apologize and broken my stroke to give them room. This time I just kept swimming. I am getting more used to it I guess.
I felt a little of the old panic come up when it got real choppy from the others swimmers and I caught some water breathing in from it. But, I just kept focused and kept my relaxed self-talk up, and soon it passed. Yeay! I didn’t need to break my stroke or switch to breaststroke to manage it.
Soon we were all bunched up at the first buoy to go ‘round it. After we rounded it I was successfully able to draft off another swimmer for a while, but she moved ahead. By the time we passed the 2nd buoy we were pretty spread out and it was really just about the swimming. For some reason this third stretch, my swim lines were completely off. I kept veering to the left. I’d look up to sight the buoy, have to swim back, then look up again and – way off again! I finally started sighting every 3 stroke or so. I was very pleased with my sighting overall. I was able to peek ahead with just my eyes and not have to lift my whole head out to breathe at the same time.
The rest of the swim just trucked along. We had to do two loops and I expected to feel a mental pull toward shore as I rounded the buoy for my 2nd lap but I felt totally fine – I was happy to keep swimming. I do remember noticing as I turned to breathe a patch of light anemic blue in the sky, and I cheered it as I swam, hoping for good weather for my spectators. And I remember wondering how many other swimmers were still in the water and wondering if I could look around to check without losing too much time. I decided not to. I remember my feet started getting a bit numb the 2nd half . It was cold water – low 60s I think. Thanks for the wetsuit Aunt Chris!
Finally I was swimming toward the finish! I was so, so happy with my swim. I had just put my head down and…swam! My sighting was efficient, I had swum fairly straight excepting that one weird stretch, I hadn’t panicked, I hadn’t had to switch strokes! I felt brilliant coming out of the water as the photo shows.
Swim Time: 33minutes
Transition One
The transition was a loooong way from the swim exit. I shoulda timed it. Leif was cute, he jogged along with me for a stretch. Most of the bikes were gone by the time I got there, likely because all of the waves started first, but of course I didn’t think that. What I thought was, boy, even with my super-swim I’m still last out. Got my wetsuit off with a wee stuggle compounded by adrenaline and a touch of vertigo, got my helmet strapped on, and was outta there…after stuffing a mini-Snickers in my mouth.
T1: 3:33m
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