With some difficulty I managed to last 90 minutes in the bay this morning. I was joined by a new swimmer I met on the beach on two weeks before. His name is Nobu and he is training for the swim leg of the Wildflower triathlon. I'm in the lead here with Nobu following close behind.
We tried to swim the break wall which is the wall to the right of aquatic park (you can see the wall is the picture above and on the map on the bottom of the page). We made it within about 20 yards of the end of the wall and got caught in a strong current. We struggled for about 10 minutes before floating back to the mouth of aquatic park. The swim time at this point was about 45 minutes.
As we approached the beach we witnessed no less than 50 wetsuit clad team in training folks wade into the water. It was nice to have the company, it made our training swim seem more 'normal'. Each of the team in training life guards jokingly commented on my lack of a wetsuit. I told them we were only in for a short swim.
At 60 minutes Nobu got out. Moments later I got really cold. I still had 25 minutes to go to reach my goal. I tried to sprint to warm up but it didn't help much. My mind was clear, but my body was giving in. I swam close to the beach to be safe. At 85 minutes, I basically swam in and sat out the remaining 5 minutes in the water to condition myself to the cold. My swim was a success, but I am left wondering if conditioning will delay the effects of the cold long enough to allow me to complete my actual swim (2+ hours). On the bright side, one month ago 30 minutes was my maximum time in the bay without a wetsuit.
Thanks for a great swim Nobu!
