Park to Park swim across Lake Washington (1.5 miles)
I have never done an event like this before. Strickly tri's and stand alone runs in my race history. I was scheduled to do a sprint tri this weekend but with nagging knee problems I decided not to do it. I heard about this swim just in the last few days and decided it would be a good alternative for me.
Up at 5:00am as I had to be at the the finish line at 6:20 to catch the shuttle to the start. Had some coffee and some peanut butter toast. If you haven't seen the fresh peanut butter at your local health food store with the chocolate chips in it, you gotta look for it. You grind it yourself at the store. It's awesome!!!
Drive the 45 minutes from my house to catch the shuttle. Met a nice woman on the bus who also did the Lake Stevens 70.3 so we had a lot to chat about.
I saw lots of people who obviously weren't carrying wetsuits and I was wondering if they just weren't crazy.
Got to the other side of the lake where the start was and started looking for Karin (a woman from the tri club who I had never met in person but we kept in touch through email the last few days so I would have at least one friendly face there).
I was in the first wave (the slowest) and took off right at 7:30. It was overcast and very little wind so the lake looked very calm. Within the first 3 minutes I found myself out in front of everyone else from my wave. It took 20 minutes for people from the wave behind me to catch up so for 20 minutes I felt like I was winning (HaHa). But I also really felt alone out there (even with tons of boat support) and didn't really have anyone pushing me. Just got into a comfortable groove and held it. Sighting was pretty easy since there were boats on both sides and kinda made a tunnel, about 50 yards wide, to help with sighting.
My goal was to finish under an hour. I just missed it and swam it in 1:00:47. I was pretty happy with that. I will definilty do this event again and it's a great break from tri's. The post race food was awesome. Scrambled eggs, sausages, fruit, muffins, coffee, juice, etc. etc.
I have never done an event like this before. Strickly tri's and stand alone runs in my race history. I was scheduled to do a sprint tri this weekend but with nagging knee problems I decided not to do it. I heard about this swim just in the last few days and decided it would be a good alternative for me.
Up at 5:00am as I had to be at the the finish line at 6:20 to catch the shuttle to the start. Had some coffee and some peanut butter toast. If you haven't seen the fresh peanut butter at your local health food store with the chocolate chips in it, you gotta look for it. You grind it yourself at the store. It's awesome!!!
Drive the 45 minutes from my house to catch the shuttle. Met a nice woman on the bus who also did the Lake Stevens 70.3 so we had a lot to chat about.
I saw lots of people who obviously weren't carrying wetsuits and I was wondering if they just weren't crazy.
Got to the other side of the lake where the start was and started looking for Karin (a woman from the tri club who I had never met in person but we kept in touch through email the last few days so I would have at least one friendly face there).
I was in the first wave (the slowest) and took off right at 7:30. It was overcast and very little wind so the lake looked very calm. Within the first 3 minutes I found myself out in front of everyone else from my wave. It took 20 minutes for people from the wave behind me to catch up so for 20 minutes I felt like I was winning (HaHa). But I also really felt alone out there (even with tons of boat support) and didn't really have anyone pushing me. Just got into a comfortable groove and held it. Sighting was pretty easy since there were boats on both sides and kinda made a tunnel, about 50 yards wide, to help with sighting.
My goal was to finish under an hour. I just missed it and swam it in 1:00:47. I was pretty happy with that. I will definilty do this event again and it's a great break from tri's. The post race food was awesome. Scrambled eggs, sausages, fruit, muffins, coffee, juice, etc. etc.
1 comment:
Hi Kristine,
I did the "race", too.I'll look for you next time. Doris
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