The swimming conditions were beautiful today. The water was 58 degrees and there was almost no wind, no pelicans, seals or bait fish boils. It was overcast but there was no fog. The water was exceptionally clear; I could see individual shells on the bottom in 10' of water. I am training for a 10k swim, so I arrived at the beach extra early. My plan was to get in before 9 and to hopefully swim for 3+ hours, which would be about 6 miles for me. If that went OK then I'd figure that I was ready. My plan was to swim laps, up and down the buoy line parallel to the beach. I am comfortable being in the water by myself along this beach and would only consider going farther out to the end of the pier after the lifeguards started working. I had a bottle of Hyper sport drink and 3 Gu's that I tethered to the first buoy on the left side so I could tank up on my way by. I got in a little before 9 and worked at settling in to a nice relaxed pace. The second lap was the toughest mentally, because I to distract myself from thinking about how far I had to still swim. Into the third lap I focused on being almost half way and from there it was all about being in the shorter half of the swim. The buoy line is just short of a mile so I was going on past the last buoy at both ends to make it a 1 mile or 30 minute lap. This was another game. This swim was all about doing the time, not the number of laps, but somehow I liked the idea of doing 6 laps. At 4 and a half laps Byron and Dale joined me and a short while later Allison pulled along side in her kayak. As I stopped at my feeding station before starting lap 6 Rob and Dave joined us. It was nice to have the company but also a bit weird after being totally into my own world for so long. With the company along I decided to do the triangle route for the last lap, jsut because it would be a change of scenery. On the leg out towards the end of the pier my shoulders and upper arms began talking to me. I didn't stop at the end of the pier and continued on to the buoy at the creek. I caught up with everyone there (I was the slow person in the water today), took a short break and swam back to my feeding station on the other side of the pier. I collected my bottle and empty Gu wrappers and came in. I had been swimming for 3hr 20min and probably covered 6 to 6.25 miles. I talked with Rob about finding a window in the next week or two to do the Avila Beach Three Martini Swim. This is a course that we have made up that consists of swimming out to the end of the Avila Pier, then to the end of the Poly Pier, across the bay to Avila Rock, off of Fossil Point, and then back to the end of the Avila Pier. See, the three points and the Avila Pier make a martini glass. A lap around is just about 2 miles. Add in the in and out length of the 'stem' and you have just about 10k.
Thank you Allison and everyone else for keeping me company today.
We will be swimming on Wednesday evening as usual.
Heads Up: Dave Van Mouwerik is going to attempt a Catalina channel crossing.
Dave's route will be from Catalina to the mainland. His attempt will start at about 11:30 PM on Sunday, August 5th. There will be updates available online at http://dvmswimfromcatalina.wordpress.com/. Information will also be posted to the Central Coast Open Water Google Group and Rob's website; www.robaquatics.com.
Dave, I know that you are prepared for this. Best of Luck!
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