I swam at Aquatic Park with Nobu Saturday morning. My goal was 2 hours in the water. The conditions were tough. It was high tide and windy. Between the chop and the flooding current, it was perfect training conditions for Alcatraz preparation.
Nobu swam with me for the first hour then returned to the club. We were swimming faster than usual and I think the pace, along with the rough conditions, had taken a toll on him.
As he staggered onto the beach, he agreed to swim with me again after a 30 minute rest at the club. As I swam away from the beach, I mentally prepared myself for swimming the remaining hour alone. I was cold and swam away from the club and into the wind at a much slower rate than the first hour.
After completing a lap around the cove I swam back toward the club beach and there was Nobu - chest deep in the water, goggles on and sporting a very determined look on his face. Nobu had regained his strength and took off into the spray of the bay. I didn’t have time to doubt or assess, instead, I just swam hard to keep up with him.
We exited the water with a total elapsed swim time of 2:03:33.
With the race two weeks away, this was my last long training swim. If the conditions are good on race day, I hope to complete the race in about 2 hours. Mentally, completing a 2 hour swim was really important to me.
As always, I recorded my swim time on my Kobold watch. Since the remaining training swims are not time critical, I did not reset the chronograph on my Kobold. My swim time is frozen on the dial of the watch and serves as a daily reminder of the preparation I've done for this race.
I’ll reset the chronograph once more on the morning of the race. Then after recording my swim time, I’ll return it to Kobold with the actual swim time on the dial.
One more solid week of training, then tapering begins.
Thanks Nobu! I’m not sure I would have made it without your help!
