Open Water Swim

Ironman AZ is only 3 weeks away and I had not done an open water swim since 2009. That is until yesterday. I left my house and headed to pick up the Firefighter so that there would be someone else there in case I got a cramp in the middle of the lake. He had sent me a text earlier in the week telling me about an open water swim that a local triathlon club was doing that day and we figured swimming in Lake Pleasant wouldn't be that bad if there was a big group of us. We had our wetsuits, goggles, brightly colored swim caps, and some body glide to keep from chafing too bad. I brought 2 cases of Wheaties Fuel cereal to hand out at the group training event and spread the word on how wonderful it is for living an active lifestyle.

Getting in our gear, still with no clue where everyone else was.

The directions were pretty vague, but with a little trial and error we found our way to the lake and began looking for the big group of people to join them, hand out cereal and learn from them about the best way to practice at Lake Pleasant. We saw some cars randomly scattered throughout the parking lot and figured that with them half a mile from the water it was too far to walk dressed in a wetsuit with no shoes on. We next put my F 150 into four wheel drive and off roaded our way down to the water where what we thought might be people there for the group swim were really campers out fishing on a random Tuesday in November. We next went back the way we came and headed to where the boats are released into the water, but every car down there had a boat trailer and there was a sign saying not to stay more then 15 minutes and with us intending to be in the middle of the lake it seemed like a bad a idea.

Me ready to swim, holding up my garb for handing out Wheaties Samples

At this time it was 4:40 PM and we had intended to already be half an hour into our swim so we went back to the random people camping, decided to keep the cereal for another day and put our wetsuits on. The first step into the water was great, it wasn't too cold, and with the sun up and an outside temperature of mid eighties the conditions were perfect for an afternoon swim. After the twentieth step into the water with only a foot of depth, I had to laugh thinking we chose the worst place to start our swim. We had committed though and as we got farther into the water we could actually see a few people swimming in the middle of the lake in wetsuits. This at least meant we weren't stood up, we just had no idea what their course was, or where they started. A few more steps in and we had deep enough water depth to swim and made our way to a buoy. The swim went well, we had no idea where we were going and started the first leg heading into the middle of Lake Pleasant for about 15 minutes. This is when the next issue came, the sun was setting already.

Looking ready to swim

The original plan was to go 35 minutes out and then turn around and call it a day when we got back to my truck. The idea of being over a mile away from my truck in the middle of a lake and the sun going down was a scary prospect so we adjusted and chose to kind of do laps instead. I breathe on my right side only during open water and the Firefighter only the left so it was kind of an ambiguously gay duo moment as stroke for stroke we could see each other as we took a breathe and sighted off of each other . This was to keep from running into each other, but also to stay on the same general pace. Major bonding especially after I had to ask him to zip me up before we got into the water. When we got back to the buoy nearest my truck we actually ran into someone from the group. He told us about the course and explained how they entered the water where the boats enter because the water gets deeper quicker. I felt stupid after hearing that, but hey I was in the middle of a lake treading water in November with the sun going down so genius wasn't exactly how I would have described myself at that moment regardless.

this is us changing in the dark

This is where we abandoned the lap idea and chose to explore the route the rest of the swimmers use and headed in the opposite direction we had just come from towards a canyon. This went great for about twelve minutes until I almost ran into branches poking out of the water and grabbed the Firefighters leg to keep him from a similar fate. By the time we swam back to the starting buoy it was dark and we called it a day. The goggles had held up well (Thank you Aqua Sphere for making wonderful goggles). The wetsuit still works like a charm and after a 1.8 mile swim we both felt like finishing an ironman wouldn't have been that big a deal. The biggest thing we learned was that we didn't need a group swim to do what we had just done. We've already scheduled to try it again on Wednesday, but show up earlier so we're not taking our wetsuits off in the dark. It was a silly adventure, but gave both of us confidence heading into the Ironman and also a really affective way to practice our open water swimming.