After a lifetime of swimming, I am competing in the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim this year for the first time.
Entries for the Bay Swim were chosen in two rounds of a lottery in November. My number didn’t come up in the first, but I got picked in the second — one of 750 people selected from about 2,500 entries.
I sent in my documentation that proved I have successfully completed an open-water swim, paid my $250 entry fee and began training in earnest in January.
A 41-year-old masters swimmer with the Montgomery Ancient Mariners, I already swim three or four days a week and prefer long-distance events. But I needed to increase my training — and work on long-distance swims — to prepare.
I started by supplementing my swim practices with weekly continuous swims by myself. I started at one hour without stopping, and worked up to two hours by mid-May.
The purpose was threefold: to get my tendinitis-inflicted shoulder used to swimming that much; to try to overcome the boredom that comes with swimming back and forth in a 25-yard pool; and to swim that long without stopping for drinks of water.
In March, I increased my training to five days a week, swimming more than 12 miles each week.
I also used some races in April and May to work on my speed and endurance. In addition to competing in a swim meet, I took on a 2.4-mile swim in the Gulf of Mexico and the two-mile Jim McDonnell Lake Swim in Reston.
Last weekend, I headed out to Sandy Point State Park to practice swimming in the Bay in a wet suit. The water was 68 degrees.
Now, I have scaled back my training and have stopped my other exercise as I rest my weary muscles during the week before the swim.
I have trained hard. Some swimmers would even say I have overtrained, though I’m not so sure. I have trained less than some people, but more than many of my teammates who are taking on the Bay.
I won’t know whether my work has paid off until Sunday morning, when I walk onto the beach at Sandy Point State Park, plunge into the Bay with 595 others — 154 swimmers have dropped out since the fall — and start swimming with everything I’ve got.
