The Swim

The day dawned clear and cool, perfect for an open-water swim.  This was the second year of my Lake Windermere mission.  The plan was to beat my time of last year in the 2K, but this time I was a little more strategic in my "training", if you can call it that.  Instead of swimming hard every day until the race, I stopped on the Thursday before Sunday's event to give my muscles a rest.

Would this work?  We would see.  The other things I decided to eliminate on this swim were the breast and back strokes.  It would be front crawl all the way.  Heck, this was a race and I planned to treat it that way.  After a breakfast of banana and toast with peanut butter, and with an eight o'clock start, I arrived around 7:30 to pick up my race kit.  Milling around, I noticed that again this year, everyone was wearing a wet suit, save I.  I was not going to pay $400 for one for one swim a year. 

When the horn sounded, we were off.  I briefly looked at the 1K buoy waaaaaay, waaaaaay out there and decided not to look again.  It seemed so far away and I knew from last year that when I arrived at it, I would just have to turn around and swim all the way back!  Happily, Windermere was calm and not too cold.  I was off.  I got into "the zone" and just kept swimming and swimming.  When I arrived at the buoy, I was actually delusional enough to think maybe I should carry on and do the 5K, heck Nancy just swim on.  Fortunately, sanity prevailed and I rounded the orange "Wilson" and started back.

The swim from the 1K buoy, although the same distance, always seems much closer, even though it isn't.  But again, that elusive beach never seemed to get closer.  An hour and four minutes after I had started, I finally hit the beach.  

With 47 swimmers in the event, amazingly it was a 53-year-old woman who captured first prize with a time of 29:20!  She beat women in their 20s and 30s, not to mention 16 men.  Wow for her is all I can say!  To top it off, five women beat the first man to finish.  Guess it was a day for the ladies!  In my case, I bested last year's time by five minutes, but was still the oldest and finished last.  But not by much!  Overall, I was pretty pleased with my swim at 1:04 -- not to mention the beautiful pair of goggles I was given for being the oldest in the meet.

I am very lucky to have such a supportive family.  Daughter, son-on-law -- both ironmen themselves -- grandchildren and husband all came to cheer me on.  Someone took a video, but I am unable to upload it here.........for some tech reason that I have no clue how to solve.

So, maybe next year............5K?  Maybe...................