Del Valle 2.5 km Open Water Swim Race Report

Quick and dirty: 2nd place age group (30-34).  Overall time: 40:31.


WARNING: Lots of dirty deets and race babble to follow...


During the past week of recovering from my crash, I received a lot of love.  Some of it was from others...

And some of it was from yours truly.

Some girls spend $450 on purses. (This was my rationale)

Swimming is always the best form of exercise to ease back into activity (it's always the first activity after doing an Ironman), and I was curious to use it as a litmus test to see how injured muscularly my body in general was after that pretty intense crash.  On Wednesday, a friend challenged me to a dual in the pool.  Seriously?  (What kind of sick individual would challenge an injured athlete? And trash-talk like there's no tomorrow?!?) How could I turn this down? At first it was a 1 lap race, but I called it unfair because he's as tall as Michael Phelps and could easily beat me across the pool with 2 arm strokes.  So I made him extend it to 2 laps.  Granted, this guy doesn't even swim, but it definitely lit my competitive fire.  


After I beat him down to Chinatown (kidding... I know he's reading this), I realized my left deltoid was pretty sore (it took the brunt of the impact), and I was honestly concerned because physically I was around 60% of my norm.  This dual in the pool was a complete joke, but  merely channeling my "race mentality" for even a minute made me hungry to race on Sunday, roadrash and all.

Sunday morning came around and I was excited/nervous, not nauseated/nervous.  BIG difference.  As I was driving to Lake Del Valle, I received a text from my friend Dana ("Go kick some swimmer's butts this morning! Sending you speedy thoughts!"), and it totally made me super excited to do just that. What's the use of getting up at 5am on Fridays to swim Master's and kill yourself on anaerobic sets if you can't cash in all that hard work later?


Let's just say I arrived ready to cash it in.

Gorgeous day for an open water swim, eh?

I started in the second wave.  Everyone was bunched behind me except for a few men, and I was trying to decipher who looked strong and had fast feet.  Some guys looked so OLD.  But I know that even old guys can swim fast.  Hmmm.  I had 2 minutes to choose my target and we were off.


The pace was pretty fast.  Normally, I use the swim as a warm up for the bike/run, always conserving energy for later.  So I was thrilled that I didn't have to adopt that strategy here.  I was here to race and leave it all in the water.  When I found myself swimming alone, rather than backing off and letting the main group catch me, I put my head down and surged to bridge the gap to faster swimmers.  I chanced it on this swim; there were times I was redlining, but once I found those glorious feet, I could recover for a bit.


For the majority of the swim, I was able to draft off of someone with a super strong kick.  I didn't even bother sighting; I just followed those bubbles and stayed on his feet.  I nicknamed him Bubbles.  And let's just say that I made Bubbles my b*tch for the majority of the swim.  (Thank you, Bubbles, whoever you are, for towing me around!)


After awhile, I decided to actually sight and see where we were in relation to the buoys. I was working so hard at staying on Bubbles' feet that I didn't want to waste a second sighting.  Dumb move.  I looked up and panicked.  Bubbles was going nowhere fast.  It was the two of us on our own, and the rest of the pack was to our far right.  I knew I had to stay with him or I'd be dropped and swimming alone.


Eventually, we merged with the main group and someone started using their body to muscle their way onto Bubbles' feet.  He kept swimming right against my roadrash, so it annoyed me even more.  I let him in and drafted off him for awhile, and then got swarmed by other swimmers.  When I get hit and pushed around, I've learned to not back down.  I tell myself I have every right to be there, and it makes me just swim harder.  I ended up totally cutting off another swimmer as I latched on to someone's kicking feet. (Wow! My aggressive driving on the road actually translates to swimming!)  And immediately, I recognized who it was...BUBBLES!  We were reunited and swam hard to the finish. 


I was happy with how I swam; I knew I did my very best, and was thrilled that it was fast enough for an AG win.

Scored some hardware to go with my roadrash (yeah, I deliberately chose this shadowy pic so the little children wouldn't be scared away)

Afterwards, I showered, make-up'd, and headed down to the South Bay for some more celebrations...

The bride-to-be-about-to-be-dunked

Taking shots. I had to blow this picture up so you can see that both Kimi and I are sporting marks on our left thighs. Like Japanese twins.  Except hers is a birthmark and mine is a fat bruise.

The engagement party also doubled as Kimi's US naturalization party, as demonstrated above.

With all this "racing," and the encouragement of Dana, I'm pretty thrilled to join TriValley Velo cycling team to race with the girls!  It's always been in the back of my mind, but I've never considered it an option.  This year so far has been about taking those "back burner ideas" and turning them into reality!!

Gino working his magic as usual, getting this race horse ready!