A couple of weeks ago I swam my first
5k race. The race was Swim the Bridge at Saylorville lake near
Granger. If you're familiar with that area you probably know the
“mile long” bridge. We swam under that. It's very dirty and
sort of smelly, but it's the biggest lake for 100 miles. It's what
we've got.
People seem pretty impressed by a 5k
swim, but it didn't seem like that big of a deal to me. In high
school we used to swim 1200 yard warm-ups then do our workout then
another 1200 yard cool-down. I'm pretty sure we did well over 5k
every day. Sometimes more than once per day. I suppose all that
experience swimming came in handy. I'm very comfortable in the water
and know I can swim all day so there's no anxiety, even when I'm
(sort of) far from land.
I haven't done much open water swimming
though so that was new. In a pool you can stare at the black line at
the bottom and not have to look up and see where you are. It's very
easy. In open water, especially Iowa water, you can't even see your
hand in front of your face. In order to see where you are and where
you're going (and you have to, it's pretty much impossible to swim in
a straight line without constant correction) you have to break stride
(stroke?) and look up. It's even harder for me since, without my
glasses, I can't see very well. Several times I couldn't see the
next buoy and had to look for other swimmers in my vicinity to guess
what direction to go. It gets doubly hard when you're told to turn
at the first orange buoy and you're colorblind. Yeah, I couldn't
tell the difference between the orange, red, and green buoys. For
the most part it didn't matter, but once I did have to ask a saftey
boater which way to go.
Several races (1.2 mile, 2.4 mile and
5k) all started at once so there was a bit of a scrum from the
beginning. Lots of groping and getting groped going on. I didn't
mind much as, again, I'm comfortable in the water, but I can see how
it could be annoying. After the first 1.2 mile lap, when about half
the racers finished their race, things got settled out and I was
pretty much alone after that.
The first lap I did front crawl, but
the second and third I did breaststroke. Breaststroke is much easier
for me both because I can see where I'm going and it was what I raced
from the ages of 8 to 16. I can swim breaststroke faster than a lot
of people can swim front crawl and very efficiently too.
Afterwards I talked to a few people I
knew and a few I didn't. A common sentiment was, “How could you
get back in and go out for that last lap?” That was a little
mystifying to me. Why wouldn't I? I signed up for 5k, I'm going to
swim 5k. I never thought I wouldn't be able to do it.
Anyway, it was pretty fun and I think
I'll do it again next year.
