In Over My Head

I kicked off my summer swimming season when I was on my recent trip with my daughter. I swam indoors over 3 mornings and totaled 1 mile. It felt good getting back in the pool, but I yearned for open water swimming. Today was the day. The only thing keeping me from a 7:30AM swim in a deep water quarry with 66 degree F/19 degree C water when the air temp was 62F/17C was common sense. Well, that has never been much of a deterrent to me in life. I would definitely literally be in over my head today in the water.

I was also figuratively in over my head today. I pulled in as another swimmer was having his wife (assuming they were married because who else would be crazy enough to be out there with him?) help him prepare for his swim with wetsuit, goggles, swim cap, emergency inflatable, amphetamines, swim diaper, etc. He and many others present were serious swimmers training for triathlons. Don’t believe me? Take a look at his car.

That is either someone who is very proud of their athletic accomplishments or a huge Marvel superhero fan of Tony Stark. As for me, I had on a pair of swim trunks and flip flops. I’ve swum in colder water, and I’m much too cheap to buy a wetsuit.

The course looks like this.

It’s about a half mile loop, and you have to swim out a ways to get to the course. It was a beautiful morning for a swim or some underwater metal detecting as pointed out by the red arrow in the picture below.

The red dot in the distance is approximately the turnaround point. On my first painfully slow loop around, I kept close to a young lady who was obviously struggling. I chatted a bit with her and discovered that she’s training for her first triathlon next weekend. When she asked what I was training for, I was thrilled to reply, “Nothing. I just like open water swimming.” And I do. So, that leads me to announce where I will be swimming this summer.

If you recall, last summer I swam 22 miles across Lake Michigan almost exclusively via lap swims in my little backyard pool. That ain’t happening again. I will be doing more open water swims in various bodies of water in the area, maybe even actually in Lake Michigan this year. But to add an international twist to my summer swimming challenge, I will be swimming the 21 miles across the English Channel with over 50% swum in actual open water swims. The ledger as of today shows 1.9 miles swum with 47% in open water. Will I make it to France by the end of summer? Hopefully, oui. Stay tuned.