I was a little worried given all the rain and looming thunderstorms today, but amazingly the weather cleared up just enough to not cancel the open water swim practice this time.
A bit of background - I started training with Team Survivor Northwest last summer, which is a group of women cancer survivors that get together and do triathlons and other things. I have never had cancer, but my mom had a friend who did, and she invited us to the group last summer. I had so much fun training with them that I eventually started helping out at some of the practices, mostly being a "swim angel" (ie swimming around with a buoy just in case anyone ever needed help). So, I volunteered to swim angel and otherwise volunteer at the practices this year too.
There were only four people who showed up to swim tonight (probably because of the weather), and a few others that were there to kayak alongside. So I didn't actually need to swim angel, which was nice because I could actually swim (I mostly just practiced sighting across the lake and trying to swim in a straight line without the help of those handy lane lines). Beaver Lake was COLD - probably as cold as the coldest swim I've ever done in Lake Washington. I was the only person there not in a wetsuit, and everyone else thought I was crazy.
The first few strokes definitely took my breath away a little bit, but I quickly settled into a rhythm. There is something I just LOVE about open water swimming - I find it so incredibly relaxing. We swam a quarter mile, and then the one male swimmer and I went back out for another quarter mile. I felt really smooth, strong, and fast, and everyone else was impressed. I mentioned to the coach that I'd always swum breaststroke and was just now getting comfortable with crawlstroke, and she was like "wow, really? I thought you've always done crawlstroke, I thought that's what you swam competitively, you're so good at it!"
So, it was really fun, and a big confidence booster, and I can't wait to get back out again!
Tomorrow is a bike/run brick, my first one of 2010!
No comments:
Post a Comment