A bit late on this one, but this Etch-A-Swim was from Sunday’s Hermosa Pier to Manhattan Beach Pier open water swim. Remember Gossamer from Looney Tunes? Well, that zigzag of a swim reminded me of his fur. Lemme tell you, that was probably one of the harder “Pier to Pier” sessions we’ve had because we faced a current going against us. It felt like a treadmill where I just wasn’t going anywhere! Water was clear too so that messed with my head as well! It took me almost 2:20 to complete! I really had thoughts of “What is happening?!? Will I be able to make Ironman Canada’s swim cutoff at 2:30? This is cutting it realllll close! Where is everyone? They’re all probably eating breakfast already!”
I came out of that swim pretty spent out of energy that I suffered on the run. It was even a flat run too! We had to do a 3 loop run of 4 miles each. Counter clockwise from the Strand to Woodchip, then clockwise, then back to counter again. That first loop was pretty much a Walk-A-Thon because I just didn’t have enough energy. I was pretty much doing 15:1 run:walk minute intervals then eventually 2:1. Second loop was better as I was able to do 5:1. Then the third, after having some Hammer Endurolytes from coach Brad and another Gu Roctane, I was able to get most of my energy back and ran for the most part. This was definitely a learning experience for me because my nutrition was waaaaaay off! I mean, almost 3 hours of back at the beach (20 minute run warmup then 2:20 of swimming) without nutrition, then continued on a run? That’s a recipe for disaster! I only brought 1 bottle of Accelerade, and some Gu. Once I was out of Accelerade, all I had was water. Not enough. Even I knew that. For some reason I thought we had SAG support to swap out, but we didn’t. For South Bay runs, we usually don’t. Now I know what to do. Unfortunately, it’s these miserable experiences that make us learn, and that I did.
