We start on shore in a mass start. The kayakers have already deployed and are waiting in a rough line between the first and second buoys. I hang back, like usual, because I do not wish to start a 10 mile swim by getting kicked in the head. When they blow the airhorn for the the start I take off at a jog into the water. I keep on wading until the water is up past my waist and then I dive forward, dolphin kick a few times, and start swimming. The start is a real jumble. I took a bad line at the beginning so I wandered off to the right and had to come back to get around the first buoy, but at least I was out of the mess for a little while. I rounded the buoy, after I got back into the churning mass of swimmers, and started passing kayakers on my left.
The kayakers were mostly lined up by number from 75 down to 1 so wifey should be around the fifteenth kayak I passed, or about a fifth of the way down the line. Well the kayakers were mostly in order, but there were a few lower numbers hiding out at the beginning of the line. As it turns out finding wifey in the kayak was no trouble. Trying to follow her once I did find her was the tricky part. With all the swimmers trying to join up with all their kayakers it was, possibly, more of a jumbled mess than the beach start. I crashed into one other kayak in the mess. Wifey kept getting boxed out by other kayakers and I would lose track of her.
We passed the buoy by the lighthouse that was the two mile mark in the Son of a Swim. I was still seeing other swimmers and kayakers but things were a little more open. I was feeling great. On the way to the next buoy we took a different line than most of the other swimmers, so things didn't bunch up again until we turned around the next bouy. At the next buoy we turned to the right and started across the lake west to east . This is a long straight stretch. Probably more than a mile between buoys. I'm still feeling good but I find this part a little frustrating. I have no reference points and I can't tell that we are making any progress.
The next buoy is somewhere off of the islands. We go around three small islands. Almost as soon as we turn around this buoy the character of the lake changes entirely. Suddenly I'm being tossed around by waves and we are being pushed toward shore. It is a struggle to get to the next buoy and turn south to complete the trip around the islands. After we turn we get some protection from the wind and I think that maybe there is only to one bad spot.
I was wrong about that. As we continue south past the protection of the islands the chop picks up again, The sky looks ominous. I get nervous thinking that the race will be halted due to the impending storm. Then I get nervous thinking the race won't be halted due to the impending storm. Meanwhile I'm swimming. As soon as we cleared the islands, and I realized this is what I would be swimming through for the next 4 miles or so, I threw all my time goals out the window. Later wifey told me that I was right on pace up to that point. But I find great freedom in not finding out until later.
I couldn't tell that it was raining, but it was. I could see wifey's race bib and hat whipping in the wind. I could see whitecaps all around me. And so it went for another long straight stretch. Maybe with more training these kinds of conditions will affect me less, but I find it takes me more effort to swim slower through rough water.
Occasionally I would ask wifey for reassurance that we were, in fact, making progress. I honestly couldn't tell. She assured me that we were moving forward, we were right on course, and I would have another feeding in nine minutes. Nine minutes could have been nineteeen or thirty or five. I had no concept of time.
Dory from Finding Nemo is singing in my head.
Then wifey told me when we got around that buoy we would be able to see the town. This sounded like a good thing. When she pointed to the buoy, I could actually see it. When we got around the buoy wifey could see the town just fine. What was even more exciting to me is I could see the next, and penultimate bouy.
You can be sure I was not using words like penultimate at this point. But I could see the penultimate buoy because it was much closer than the other buoys had been spaced. Also, having come around a point of land, there was partial protection from the wind and waves. In order to resist the temptation to keep sighting on the buoy and wasting energy I decided I would not peek for at least one hundred strokes. I lost count. Started again. Best guess, there were maybe 700 strokes between the third to last and second to last buoys.
At this point I could actually see the beach, the tent where there was food. But I still had to go around the last buoy. This is the same buoy off the beach that we went around right at the start of the race. I'm pretty sure they didn't move it while I was out on the course. I'd like to say that I poured it on to finish strong. But that is not true. I plodded along like I had been doing for hours. Rounded the final buoy and headed for shore. I had to adjust my course three times between the last bouy and the finish on the beach. The wind was giving me one last push. Wifey peeled off to my right to get to the kayak landing area. I swam until my fingers hit bottom and then I swam a few more strokes. I stood up feeling less wobbly than I expected and stumbled up onto the beach.
Partly I stumbled because I was tired. But mostly because there was a long orange kayak cutting in front of me. One volunteer asked the kayaker to please not trip the swimmers, another one recorded my finish and a third one gave me some blue gatorade.
I found my cheering section: Mom, Dad and baby son. And when they asked me how I felt I told them my most pressing concern.
"I require chocolate"
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