Swimming Shenanigans

With the triathlon less than TWO WEEKS away (eek!), training is slowly starting to taper. Last night was a group swim in the lake. We were to do a mile, which is the distance of the swim leg in the race. I raced home from work, packed my bag and Iron Horsed my way down to the beach and started the swim, enthusiastically of course.

I actually did feel pretty good in the water. I'm some what used to my wetsuit (at least to the point where I don't go into sheer panic because it pushes on my trachea), and the waves at this beach pale in comparison to those at the practice tri a couple weeks ago. I've slowly learned how to deal with the slow rolls of the water and block out thoughts of people flushing their undesired pet alligators and sharks down their toilets to have them end up in Lake Michigan where they silently grow to enormous size due to all the chemical waste it the lake, then eat innocent triathletes from Oregon. =)

So I was cruising. I felt powerful, I was focused on my form and for once I felt good about swimming again. Then a little voice popped in my head: The second you get confident, something goes terribly wrong. But I swam on. No nonsense-- I have a race to prepare for. After awhile of swimming in a Phelps-esque manner, I noticed as I took a breath a LARGE boat super close to me. That's funny, boats don't usually get this close to the shore... So I stopped and looked up. I couldn't see anything, my goggles were foggy and mascara laden (new item to triathlon list: WATERPROOF mascara...). So I tried to stand up-- we should be able to stand when swimming at this beach-- it's like 4 feet deep. I couldn't touch. First pinch of panic. I treaded water and pulled my goggles to my forehead. I couldn't see the shore! I kinda chuckled to myself, not wanting to admit that this was rather panic-worthy. I decided to swim diagonally towards the shore so I could make my way back, but still get to the turnaround point-- no one likes the person that turns around early. So I swam what I thought to be the right direction for about five more minutes then paused to check my progress. I could see the shore which was super encouraging, however, it was spoiled by the fact that the sky-scrapers looked like monopoly hotels and I could barely make out people along the shore. As I treaded water trying to figure out how in the world I got so off track I heard a very faint "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!! COOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEE BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCKKKK!!!!!!!!! I was taught to do as I'm told, so this time I decided to point myself directly towards the shore and swim towards it-- none of this diagonal business. I could feel myself getting panicky; I couldn't touch the bottom, I had no intentions of being where I was in the water, and every now and them some grass or something would grab at my arm or ankles. But I consciously said to myself 'The more panicked you get the worse this is going to be, figure it out.' So I forced myself to be calm and just kept swimming. It took a solid fifteen minutes to get to the point where I could clearly see the people who were shouting at me to come back. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!" they yelled. "...I don't know.." I responded. What do you say to that? I'm swimming you nutcase. My scenic route was hardly intentional. I think they thought I'd flown off the deep end and decided to swim away from life into the depths of Lake Michigan. Uhh no thank you. My life is pretty fantastic and even if it were awful to the point of no return, I would rather live in its awfulness than fall to the disgusting-ness of that body of water. Sick. Anyways-- I know they were just concerned. I was way too close to huge boats, and that is dangerous. So I'd gone a little beyond the turn around point, so I just swam back with some people who were still swimming. This time, I made sure to look up every 8 to 10 strokes. Boo. I HATE looking up, it absolutely kills my momentum. That Tarzan drill we did in the pool was for a reason though...shoot. So the swim back was inefficient and embarrassing because if I do anything worse than swimming in a straight line, it's swimming with my head out of the water every once in a while. I finally made it to the end and physically felt surprisingly good. I really do enjoy distance swimming-- you can block out everything around and just be. It's refreshing, really. But I was SO embarrassed! And honestly I was annoyed because I had wanted to gauge how I'd feel after the swim leg in the race based on this swim, but I couldn't now-- I went significantly farther than one mile. If we're going to be honest, I wanted a re-do. I obviously had somethings to work on still! Herky-jerky hip coach (of course) was there as I climbed the ladder up to the bank with an expression of "What was that stunt about?!" on his face. I just shrugged my shoulders and kinda said 'whoops.' He then informed my that they'd sent a lifeguard out when they realized how far out I was and that I was oblivious to my mistake. However, said lifeguard GAVE UP. (wtf?!) So I received a deserved lecture about how necessary it is to look up when I am swimming and that it is very dangerous to be out that far where so many boats are and how I am so lucky it wasn't a nicer day because there'd be so many MORE boats.... on and on and on. Like I said-- deserved. I returned to where most of the group was de-wetsuiting and packing their bags. There was a buzz of 'who was that so far out?' 'who'd they send the guard after?' I was actually remarkably calm about it. As I've thought about it, I think this episode would definitely be worthy of significant emotional upset and a possible breakdown episode due to sheer embarrassment and duel with death. But I was able to chuckle about it and say "..yep, that was me" and not get too worked up. Gotta hold tight to those small victories.

Lesson learned: look up when you swim. Won't forget that one anytime soon.

Tonight is a race-prep clinic at a bike shop downtown. I'd originally planned to Iron Horse it there, but she's hurting. Her gears are getting funkier and funkier and I really think I need to let her rest until the big day. This is upsetting, as there are still ten days and I don't feel good about taking a bike sabbatical until the 24th. So we'll see. I'll take the El today and figure out how to train without pushing her over the edge later. If you're a praying person though, talk for a minute with the Big Guy about helping ol' IH push through the end of this race. Some divine intervention is going to be essential in pulling the off the bike leg-- that is... if I don't swim away first.