On the Open Water

I'm proud to announce that, when it comes to open water swimming, I no longer have to suffer with the fear of the unknown.

Now I get the joy and excitement of knowing exactly what I'm scared of. Not exactly the amazing progress I'd hoped for, but hey, like they say, better the devil I know than the devil I don't. I guess.

Soo....

I've gone out to the lake to swim twice so far. Randy and I are making a routine of going to the lake for a swim in the morning and then going for a long ride afterwards.

So, two Saturdays ago, I found myself on the beach of a local lake, all gussied up in my swimsuit, goggles and swim cap. Which I'm sure was very amusing to all the families there dressed in their happy weekend splashing around bikinis and bathing suits.

Randy, being the super-brave trooper he was, pledged to go out with me and splash around. He was at least dressed properly for the setting, in a dashing pair of boardshorts.

Together, he in his dashing outfit, me in my "I'm pretending to be an Olympic swimmer" getup, we waded on in, past kids splashing around in floaties, teenagers trying to stay afloat on an inflatable mattress, and one screaming child being dragged out of the water.

Finally we got to the deep water and it was time for me to start swimming.

After months of preparing and swimming pool laps and stressing about the terror of open water, I was expecting to take one or two strokes and then instantly drown.

But when I put my head down and started swimming, I was surprised to find that it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

I couldn't see anything but a surreal murky greenness and a brief flash of my arm as I pulled through each stroke. But, much to my surprise, that didn't really bother me. It was actually kind of comforting in a weird sort of way. The greenness made it easy to not think about how far I had to swim or how far I'd come already, but to just focus on the motion of pulling and recovering, pulling and recovering.

Of course, I still got super tired. Not nearly as tired as Randy, though! (:

We only went out for about 10 or 15 minutes. Things were going so well and I didn't want to mess anything up, since I was feeling pretty confident.

The second time I got in the open water, however, the experience wasn't quite so fun. It had stormed pretty hard the day before and, as a result, the water level was really high and the lake was really choppy. (And maybe I was in teeny bit of a cranky mood.) Every time I breathed on my right side, a choppy little wave would break right into my mouth. Mmmm, yummy lake water. I swallowed quite a bit of it, but I still kept going.

Right outside the designated swimming area, there were a set of buoys about 50 meters apart. I did about 12 lengths in all. Unfortunately, I had to rest on every single length. The whole thing was pretty demoralizing and I started to have some serious doubts about whether I'd ever be able to finish a 750 meter swim.

But I'm a trooper and we'll be back out there again this weekend. I really need to keep building my confidence on the swim, because that's still the part that is scariest for me.

When we go out on Saturday, Randy is going to bring out the kayak, so instead of swimming between the two buoys, I can actually swim some distance, knowing that he'll be there for me to hold onto if I really, desperately need some flotation assistance. Because one thing I learned last week is that if there's a buoy, I'm going to stop and hold on to it. So hopefully, I'll be able to get a more realistic open water swim where, if I have to rest, I'll be forced to do it without the handy convenience of a buoy to hang onto.

Wish me luck!