The 7:30 a.m. start of my first open-water race of the season came early last Saturday.
I was among 12 swimmers from the Montgomery Ancient Mariners who flew to St. Pete Beach, Fla., last weekend for the annual Hurricane Man race in the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s a fun race: 2.4 miles in the clear, blue Gulf, followed by a post-swim breakfast with free Coronas — the breakfast of champions! Most of our group stays at a fellow team member’s beach house, so the race is only a part — albeit the focal point — of a weekend full of fun and friends.
This year, however, it also served as a training race for June’s 4.4-mile Great Chesapeake Bay Swim under the twin bridge spans.
The Florida air was warm, the water looked calm, and we were excited to start swimming as the sun rose and the race approached.
The beeper went off for the women’s start, and about 150 swimmers clad in gold swim caps splashed into the Gulf. I quickly realized that the water was much choppier than it looked from shore, though it wasn’t as rough as last year, when a storm was off the coast.
After muttering to myself about the choppy conditions, I remembered the important part of the swim — this was supposed to be training — and rough water was good practice for me. I found myself repeating my newfound mantra — good training for the Bay, good training for the Bay.
The first half of the swim went quickly. The huge Don Cesar hotel — a bright pink landmark one mile into the race — seemed to arrive much quicker than in previous years. Normally, it looms ahead, never moving. It seems as if you will never get past it, and once you do, the current sometimes pushes you backward.
But this year I didn’t let the two-block-long pink behemoth psych me out. I briefly felt the water’s chop abate and picked up my pace. But the water quickly turned rough again, and I found myself swimming in place, dead even with a clump of trees on shore. I made a point of not looking at my watch — my fear is that either I will think it’s a good time and I’ll slow down, or if it’s a slow time, I’ll lose my drive — so I had no idea how long I had been in the water.
A man drafted off me for quite a while, and I quickly nicknamed him “The Parasite.” He ran into me several times as he stayed with me, using my wake to give himself a little rest — and taking me completely out of my zone. Finally, I pulled away from the Parasite and back to concentrating on the reach of my arms, the roll of my hips and the location of the darned orange buoy marking the finish line.
Unfortunately, the male swimmers (who had started two minutes before the women) wore red caps, so several times I saw a red cap and thought it was the orange buoy in the distance. In retrospect, that might have been helpful, since I tried to pick up my speed. But at the time, it made the race — which had been going quickly — start to feel like a long slog. A nice, warm slog, but a slog nonetheless. And I began obsessing that I would not see the buoy and swim past it. My excitement at thinking I would have a fast time waned, and I started worrying about being slower than last year.
Finally, I saw the buoy in the distance. I trained my sights on it, tried to sprint, turned the corner around it, and headed for shore. I swam to the beach (tip: It is always faster to swim as far as possible than to try to run through the water), stood up, wobbled, and tried to shuffle to the orange cones marking the finish line on the beach. I looked at my watch — and was pleasantly surprised. The final results confirmed my happiness — 1:04.48, almost six minutes faster than last year and 3.5 minutes faster than my first year.
I placed fourth in my age group, but I was much happier about my time. My partner Tom, who did not make the trip, left me a message later: “I’m really proud of you. … That was an awesome, awesome swim.”
The race was fun. It was motivating. It built my confidence. It was the highlight of training.
As I flew over the Bay Bridge on the way back Sunday afternoon, I looked down confidently and thought to myself, “That doesn’t look that long.”
