Lake Swim

That's right, folks: I swam in a lake. A gross, murky, seaweed-infested lake full of sharks and shipwrecks and squids and probably the Loch Ness monster in there too. At least, that's what my crazy brain kept thinking every time I had to put my face back in the water. I miss my nice clear pool water! I want to see that blue tile stripe showing me where to go! But I have done the lake swim and will do a couple other lakes in the coming three weeks (eep!) before The Big Day.

Let's share some more details. First, a picture! (I don't have a lot of those, sorry. I'm not one of those people that wants to put pictures of myself sweating on the Interwebs.)

Thanks to the magic of cell phone cameras, we have this picture of me, my friend/swim coach Jess, and my training buddy KC. This was shot moments before we plunged into Silver Lake, shown behind us. Just look at us in our swim caps! My roommate Anna sat on the beach with our stuff, and she reported a child saying of us, "They must be really good! They have hats!"

A few details about the swim: First of all, it was c-c-c-cold. Hopefully another 3 weeks will warm up the lake in Clearwater! It was manageable, though, so I'm not worried about it. Second of all: I am SO THANKFUL for Jess! Without her, we would have been... well, sunk, pun more or less intended. KC would consistently swim off at a 90-degree angle to the direction we wanted to go; and I freaked out every three strokes or so about the nasty murky water. Thanks to goggles, I could open my eyes underwater, but I couldn't see anything. It was gross and kind of nightmare-ish for me. I have anxiety about deep water a little bit. Oh, also, any time I would swim by a piece of seaweed I would scream. Couldn't help it. It's gross enough when it touches my leg when I'm not expecting it, but when I put my face back in the water after taking a breath and there's this piece of something nasty staring at me, waving in the current or whatever, it's kind of terrifying. Seriously, I would never survive in the wild. I better stay away from the ocean.

Anyhow, the solution that the three of us came up with was pretty great. KC would swim to one side of Jess, so she could keep him steering in the right direction. Then I would swim close behind Jess, so I could see her feet and knew that I was not left alone to die a murky death in the middle of some godforsaken lake. (Did I mention I have anxiety about deep water?) With that foot security right in front of my face, I made much better progress, except when we swam around an island that had enough seaweed by it that I had to stop every stroke and a half to scream. But the swimming part itself was not bad. The only problem was that I was not relaxed in the water at all, so I was having a much harder time breathing. Hopefully a few more lake excursions will get me accustomed to the ick. Also, on Race Day, there will be hundreds of people swimming together, so unless I'm really super awful bad, I should be able to see other people throughout the duration of the swim. That will help a lot.

I'm not a good enough swimmer to go fast enough to actually fatigue my muscles; so in that respect, I hope I'll do all right for the other two legs of the race. I'm feeling pretty good about the swim portion of the tri. Now I just have to convince myself to train a little more with the running and the biking. I've been pretty complacent in both areas, I'll admit. One of these next couple swims, I'm hoping we'll be able to swim for a while and then get right on a bike. That transition will be weird, I think, so good to practice before The Event. Same thing with the bike-to-run transition. All right, Ruth. Let's go.