Luckily no sightings of sharks, or even Sharktopus yesterday out in our Santa Monica / Venice Beach open water swim. As always, my open water swim skills sucks so bad that I brought out my inner Etch-A-Sketch in the ocean. As you can see above, what I was REALLY trying to do was to draw Sharktopus! Ok, there’s some points on there that shows I went 180 and swam backwards. Although I would still believe that I did, the GPS Satellites were lost on certain points and lost track. Still, very crooked, very terrible. Yes, I have to work on my sighting. Bad enough that I’m due for new contact lenses. What? Sight the pier and ferris wheel? Can’t see that! Swimming south was fine because I could see the shore every time I took a breath on my left side, and I think I kept up with the pack for a good distance.
Towards the end of that first half though, the current seemed strong and the water got choppy, and it really took me off course! There were many times (as usual), that I was alone. I tried not to panic because it IS scary out there. It’s a good thing the water out there isn’t very clear, I wouldn’t want to know how deep I am out there, or if there are any creatures below me. I’d rather not know! Eventually, I made it to my destination. Coach Holly and Jason were calling me back in because we were running out of time, plus I pretty much swam MORE than the planned distance at that point!
After the swim was a nice 5 mile run up the strand, then up Ocean Blvd and back. We also had a nice pot-luck/picnic near our starting point, which was an amazing rest from a pretty big workout weekend.
Below, at the picnic, Bill and I compared our maps on our Garmins. I don’t know what’s crazier, that my swim was that crooked, or that Bill was able to swim a straight line, to and from, and pretty much take that same exact route back! Amazing!
So, what do you think ?