Today's word was WINDY, as in umbrellas and pop ups cartwheeling down the beach windy. The wind was out of the west at 10 mph, gusting to 24 mph and making whitecaps all of the way to the shore. The water's surface was all broken up with occasional larger swells. The surf was 3 to 4 feet with an occasional 5 footer. The water temperature was 53° and the air temperature 64°.     

Tiki and Niel were going to swim for an hour so Tiki would have time to join the lifeguards workout and I figured after yesterday's three mile swim and the rest of the day working in the yard that a short but harder swim would be OK.  Before we got in I received a text from Tom saying that it was messy and mixed up out there and he was anxious to know what I thought of the conditions.  

I had planned on swimming to the end of the Cal Poly Pier and coming back to the end of the Avila Pier, but by the time I had reached the first buoy to turn towards the creek I was already thinking about shorter routes. 

Where's Tiki? 

I was easy to lose each other in these conditions. Going down the buoy line to the creek and over to the CP Pier we were headed directly into the chop. I found my pace and was doing fine, just banging along, except for the occasional larger wave which would pick me up and drop me into a hole on the other side so I'd go under the next wave. There was so much going on I wasn't even aware of the water temperature.      

At the second crossbars. This is one of the larger waves. The smaller ones were breaking. 

From the second crossbars we swam to the end of the Avila Pier and in to the beach. Our swim was 47 minutes for 1851M. Someday Garmin will be able to tell why you are going slow and adjust the stats for the conditions. There is a hint in today's data, my time for 100M was 35 seconds slower than usual. 

Tuesday it will not be breezy until the afternoon so my 8AM swim should be less special.

niel