SWIMMER STOPS OWN RACE TO SAVE WOMAN, CHILD

Someone asked me what I thought about during my nearly three hours swimming across the Chesapeake Bay.  I said "Nothing, really.  In fact, I was kind of bored."

But that's not quite true.  With every breath to my right, I could see the traffic on the eest bound span of the bridge.  Huge trucks lumbering across, seemingly tiny cars whizzing by.  It was good to see some evidence of an outside world.  My only other external stimuli was the occasional glimpse of a kayaker that I hoped wasn't about to call to me that I was off course and yellow (and more and more frequently red) caps appearing momentarily and disappearing into the troughs of the waves, making me think I'd imagined them.  

I needed something to pass the time.  And because I like stories, I made one up.  Remember a couple of years ago when an accident sent a car plummeting off the bridge into the water?  That served as a rich basis for my story of luck, heroism and eventual triumph.  With me as the plucky heroine, of course, leading to the gratifying headline above.

So that occupied about 10 minutes.  

I was quite excited in the days leading up to the race.  The tides looked like they were going to be in our favor, the winds not too strong and no thunderstorms in sight.  I knew I'd trained well enough to do the distance and with a practice ocean swim a couple of weeks ago, I had a sense of what my time might be.

The morning dawned bright and clear and I could nearly make out the end of the bridge when I stood at the edge of the water at Sandy Point State Park and took the requisite video of how far I was to swim.

Scoping out the water.

Really?

One of the amazing things about this race is that for 4+ hours, they completely shut down all shipping, recreational sailing and even stray kayakers under and through the bridge.

When I saw a tanker like this passing under the bridge, it gave me a new appreciation for
the size of the thing.

A couple of days before, my teammate Jimmy and I tried to outdo each other in our obsessive research of tides and times, so poor Mark was armed with Powerpoint diagrams like these, showing when the tide would change from an ebb tide to a flood tide, and where I expected to be based on if it was a good day, an expected day, or a bad day.  In my defense, it's not exactly a spectator friendly event so I thought this might allow him to participate more.  

All the evidence pointed to fairly gentle currents.

Sometime between 1.5-2.5 hours into the race,
the tide would be coming in from my right shoulder.

After stories of last year's tide change that stalled lots of swimmers, resulting in them being pulled from the race, I was extremely happy to see the conditions.  Easy Peasy.  I had this.

As did all my friends, some of whom had been pulled last year.
In green is the infamous Coach Mark who got us here with his plan.
He's raced this event over 15 times.

It was interesting to compare this race to the other sorts of races I've done.  There was very little of the energy and palpable anxieties I see in triathlon - most people just lazed about under the trees waiting for the pre-race meeting.  The event would be chip timed, but we had to put a bib number tear off under our swim caps.  I also put my Garmin under my swim cap.  I tried putting my goggles under my cap, which I don't ever do and that pulled on my hair.  Which annoyed me, so of course I had to a last minute adjustment of the cap configuration. Which made me rethink my looping of the wetsuit pull tab - what if someone caught their hand in it?  So that needed adjusting too.

Yeah, I'm the only one futzing.

Finally, we were off.  The beatings weren't too bad leading to the first turn under the west bound span and into the open water between the spans.  The first mile buoy came up ridiculously fast - 7 minutes before my Garmin buzzed its first mile.  

Between that first buoy and the fourth, the event was fairly uneventful.  There's a point in the bridge where the spans space out and I was fairly sure I was going off course and would end up on the outside of the bridge.  You can see that in my Garmin track with the overcorrection.  At that point, the current was pushing me right.  You can also see fairly clearly roughly when the tide started to change around the middle of the bridge, pushing me left.  Mostly though, I tried to stay in the middle of the "bowling alley" as instructed and I thought I did OK with that, though the track shows otherwise.  

The conditions definitely were choppier than expected and there was a fairly decent swell that lifted me up and dropped me down in a not very rhythmic way.  The conditions also impacted my stomach.  Although I didn't feel particularly nauseous, there were several times when I came close to throwing up, after my two gels and a large swallow of salt water after mile 3.  That continued until the end.

I missed the second buoy, saw the first feed boat and missed the second.  My Garmin buzzed away with each passing mile, and my Timex showed me some pleasing splits - 33:55, 32:39, 30:42. 35:40.  Awesome - right on expected pace!  Once that final 4th mile buzzed, I figured it'd be about 15 minutes for the final 0.4  - less if I had enough energy to push it.

Ah hubris, thy name is Chesapeake.  Now, I don't know if the route is long, or if my Garmin is wrong (it's typically off slightly for running, dead on for cycling), or if I did indeed swim nearly another 0.4 miles though the course of my wobbly progress along the blowing alley, but my final distance shows as 4.78 miles, rather than the 4.4 advertised.  But whatever the total, what's telling is the splits.  For that last 0.78 miles, my time is 34:50 - as long as my longest mile.  I know I was tiring, but holy hell that's quite a falling off of the wheels!

I heard from Mark and others that for about an hour before I came in, almost every swimmer left the water commenting on how rough the last 1/4 mile was along the breakwater.  It was very frustrating.  I could see the beach, but had no idea where the finish line was.  Despite the tide supposedly pushing me left, I think the 'bounce' off the breakwater was pushing me right.  I could see loads of people walking since the water was so shallow, but dammit, this was a swimming event and I was going to swim all the way in.  It was the only time I stopped momentarily and swore.  But I kept plugging away and finally touched the bottom twice and allowed myself to stand up.  

I know I didn't look happy.  Janet commented to Mark that I looked out of it.  And I certainly felt it.  I saw my time - 2:47 and was shocked to see how far off the pace I'd dropped from my estimation.  Almost instantly I could feel the sun cooking me in my full wetsuit, though I never felt overheated in the water., so it was a relief to strip out of it.

I'm happy to see that I managed to muster a smile for this picture.  It was great having Mark there - he was cheering and jumping up and down as I woozily made my way up the hill to him - I think he had all the energy and joy I wasn't feeling.

The day after, I definitely know I did something big and tiring yesterday.  The only muscular issues I have are the fronts of my arms where the biceps meets the deltoids (sort of - either way, it's not my lats which I know I should have used), and sort of glutes to inner thighs (huh?).  

People keep on asking me - would I do it again?  My initial reaction is "No."  Not because it was difficult (which it was, and that last 3/4 mile really sucked - it was like the 4 mile uphill finish to MoM only nature sprung it on us without warning), but more because it was boring.  There was nothing to look at, no-one to talk to and very little sense of progress.  And while I enjoyed the training for the first few months, the last few weeks have been tough.  Training in a pool isn't the most exciting thing in the world.  I do think that a 3 mile race would be a good distance, even in the ocean.  Or, maybe 2.4 in a lake.  Yeah.  That sounds like a good distance.

But, remember my mantra?  Never say never.  Ask me again in a few weeks.

PS - all unreserved thanks to Coach Mark, and I'm sorry I called you a bastard.  Are we even for MoM now?