Hubby Brandon met me in Hawaii and we really enjoyed the week. We did touristy things and hang around and soak up the beach vibe stuff. I have to admit, I am more of a hang around on the beach person. Something about the ocean just renews me.
Two days before the race I got in the ocean to stretch out and swim a few hundred meters. I was in waist deep water with people around me and I still couldn’t get “shark week” images out of my head. My overactive imagination is not always helpful. I wailed to Brandon afterward that there was no way I was going to get into the deep end of the ocean when I was having such a hard time in the shallow end. (Not to self: Do NOT watch shark week programs just days before an open water ocean swim.) He reassured me that it would be all right and I reminded myself that I went all the way to Hawaii to swim this race. No backing out now.
Labor day morning we walked from our hotel to the race start. It was fun to mingle with the other athletes and to feel the race day excitement again.
At nine am the cannon sounded and the first wave of swimmers (green caps) took off. There were five groups, leaving five minutes apart, and I was one of the red caps in group two. It was a little crazy at first swimming out to sea but it thinned out after the first marker. It was a rough swim but I found myself enjoying the motion of the waves and the feel of being in the sea. We were out beyond where the waves broke so I didn’t get any of the washing machine tumbling cycle like I had two days before while trying to surf. Brandon didn’t think it was necessary to take a surf lesson but I’m going to disagree with him on that one.
The water was rough enough that the markers were hard to see. Every time I looked up I found myself off course and needed to swim back out some more. That meant a lot of zig zagging and I’m sure I swan at lease four miles instead of the 2.4 miles. Brandon had walked down to the finish line beach and took some photos of me on the home stretch. I’m number 466 in the middle of the photo:
After slowly running up beach to the finish line (jelly body) I clocked in at 1 hour and 22 minutes. Out of 900 swimmers I placed 321st. Which was 5th in the old lady division. Next year I’m breaking an hour and winning my age division. Who’s swimming with me?
