June 4, 2005
The Potomac River Swim for the Environment, a 7.5 mile swim from Virginia to Point Lookout State Park in Maryland. The weather was very nice. It was mostly overcast, about 70 degrees, not much wind, water temp 65 degrees.
I decided to enter this race last year, after I was supposed to kayak for my friend, James Kegley. The race was cancelled in 2004 because of bad weather (4-5 foot seas), maybe I was figuring the same thing would happen to me.
I started training in earnest in January. I decided that if I was going to do this swim, I would be much happier actually putting in enough effort to hopefully do well and not simply finish. Aside from missing a couple weeks to bronchitis in April, and a week in late May to a stiff neck, training went very well, especially considering how much time I spent swimming by myself. Swimming by oneself is really hard to sustain, up and back, up and back, up and back, ugh. I wonder if the time I missed being sick actually helped me in the long run by allowing me to rest and recover.
While training, most of my free time was taken up by swimming. I have no garden this year, my house is in a severe state of chaos, and I did not do a lot of communicating with friends. Multitasking has never been my strong suit.
How does a race like this work? Each swimmer has a kayaker who guides you through the race. From the swimmer's perspective, you can't see a thing. You have no idea where your going, so you need someone to follow. James was my kayaker, and a fabulous job he did. He stayed to my left the whole way, right beside me the whole time. The plan was to stop every 20 minutes for a drink, so he would hold up all five fingers when I was I had 5 minutes left before a stop. Just before stopping he would pull ahead and get my drink ready for me, then hold it out for me. While stopped, he would tell my stroke rate, and tell me how close I was to those ahead of me. Three times during the swim I ate during a stop, a 1/2 of a larabar (chocolate coconut) and on the last stop a banana. Bananas, I think, are difficult to handle while in a kayak, mine was rather squished when handed to me, but bananas don't suffer much from being squished when your in the middle of the Potomac river. I found out how impossible it is to guide yourself during the swim at the end ofeach rest stop. I would start swimming again, and it would take James a minute to get everything put away and get back in place beside me. Invariably duing this time I would start swimming way to the left or way to the right. This would happen in a span of maybe 10 seconds. I simply can't swim straight, not even close to straight. You would think that all the years of pool swimming might cause one to swim straight naturally, evidently not. I think I could complete circle in a few minutes without realizing it.
While swimming, your kayaker gives you hand signals. It seems that there are some universal hand signals. The aforementioned 5 minutes left, a "doing good" signal, which is the thumb and forefinger in a circle. Unfortunately, James and I did not cover the signals before starting the swim. So I was very confused when he started tapping his forehead about an hour into the swim. I found out what it meant a few seconds later when I ran smack into a piece of floating wood. I stopped and James looked at me and said, "When I tap my forehead, that means your about to run into something."
The plan was to stop every 20 minutes and take a drink, and eat something every few stops during the swim. Since I have not done any swims of this length, I was quite unsure of how I was going to feel in the water. My only comparison is the Bay Bridge swim, a 4.4 mile swim. I have always felt like crap at the end of that swim. So, I figured, feel like crap after 4.4 miles, what the hell am I going to do for the next 3.1 miles? I decided to take it very easy for the first 20 minutes. Since warmup was not an option, the first 20 minutes served as a warmup. One of the best things about swimming a race like this is having a kayaker. With a kayaker you have someone who is helping you out, someone who is rooting you on, and you get regular feedback. For me, the race was much easier because I knew how long I had been swimming, which meant I knew approximately how long I had left. This is quite useful information when your trying to just keep swimming strong. It helped me stay focused through the the whole race.
The race started and I felt good, surprisingly good. The first 20 minutes was easy and I was loose and relaxed and feeling pretty confident about having a good swim. I kept my pace fairly slow and easy though for the first hour, I kept telling myself that it is a long race. Feeling good for the first hour and swimming too fast leads to feeling terrible for the last couple of hours. At the end of the first hour I picked up the pace a bit and held that pace for the next hour. TWO hours in and I still felt good. I was wildly surprised . After two hours there was just three of us vying for the lead. I kept increasing my stroke rate during the swim, and for the last 40 minutes was swimming about as hard as I could. I am not sure I was swimming any faster though. In review, I might try to work on swimming more efficiently at the end rather than just increasing my stroke rate. I did not catch either of the swimmers in front of me, but we all finished within 4 minutes of each other, so it was a pretty close finish.
At the end of the swim, as I was coming up to the beach, I was swimming as hard as I could, and inexplicably, there were hundreds of people on the beach and as I swam in. I could hear what I thought was cheering and clapping. This made no sense and swimming is not a good spectator sport, but a group of many hundreds, of hispanics were having a mass baptism at the very spot the race was finishing. So, I exited the water to mass chanting, singing and clapping. It was not for me, and it was a bit disconcerting, and rather humorous. I was swimming in wondering why all these people were here cheering for this race of 21 people.
A few of my friends showed up for the finish of the swim. Paul Fetters, Mary Beth Gardiner, Matt Fetters, Lindsay Moran and Jesse Kegley (my youngest fan). That was really cool to have some friends waiting at the end of the race. It is not the most exciting thing to wait around for a couple of hours to watch someone swim the last few hundred yards into the beach, but they showed up, and that felt great.
The end result: I got third place overall, and second place in the non-wetsuit division. Full results: http://www.crosslink.net/~cherylw/prs-05/prs2005-results.htm
The next week I swam in the Great Chesapeake Bay swim. A 4.4 mile swim across the bay in between the bridge spans. I had another good swim. My time was 1hr 40min 40secs. I was 24th overall out of 633 swimmers, and I placed third in my age group, 35-39. In retrospect, I will not do this double again, while I have no complaints about my bay swim(it was my best of 6 swims, time and place), I was not fully recovered from my swim the week before and maybe 12.1 miles of racing in one week is not the right thing to do.
I am all done now. It feels good to be done. Now I see the long list of tasks that I have ignored for the past few months. Maybe I should enter another long race?