Freedom Mile OWS Race Report

 Date: July 4th, 2021

Location: Wildwood New Jersey

Distance: 1 mile OWS

2021 Endurance Event #3

Conditions: about 73 degrees/wetsuit legal

Marshall (Kara's SO) and I decided to get up early and drive the 10 or so miles to this inaugural race.  I was a little tired from driving out to Kansas (2400 miles of driving) and back to pick-up Jen and Riley, but up we were and down to Wildwood for the race.

There were 173 people in the 1-mile swim (11 in Marshall's Age Group and 15 in mine) and we decided to jump off the pier towards the front of the pack (self-seeded time-trial start format).  Marshall jumped in in-front of me and I probably crossed the timing mat a second or two behind him.

It was a bit of a fall and I definitely got a little charge out of that but soon was right into swimming.  I felt immediately pretty good and focused on all of my swim-smooth technique cues.  Marshall pulled away from me, which is not unexpected given he is a much better swimmer (but not as well trained, given his schedule, on this race morning).  We hit 0.12 miles and they had an in-water timing arch and Marshall was 11 seconds in front of me already.  At this point I was in 4th in my Age Group and was 36th overall.

My swim strategy, for this distance (not sure if it's that good, but it's mine) is to try to swim pretty easy over the first 5 minutes or so and then to build progressively from there.  The net of that is I don't overcook the first couple of hundred yards (you can see I was pretty steady for the first 1,000 yards in my splits below).  I began to consciously push after the arch and about 1/3 of the way into the race I pulled even with Marshall.  He breathes on his right side and I my left and since I was to his right, we basically swam the rest of the race looking at each other.  I'd surge and he would match.  He'd surge and I would respond.

We hit 0.82 miles with me up a second and proceeded to both swim as hard as we could (my pace dropped below 1:30/100 yards). In the end, I nipped Marshall by 2 seconds.  Marshall swam 27:09 for the mile which was good enough for 2nd in his Age Group.  I swam 27:07, which given the number of old guy fast swimmers at the Jersey Shore, was only good enough for 5th in my Age Group.

I finished 33rd (82% percentile) and Marshall was right behind me.  My Garmin measured the course a little short at 1,692 yards (0.96 miles) and my average pace per 100 yards was 1:37.  This is the equivalent of a 33:57 H-IM swim split and I feel a much better indicator of my current swim fitness than my swim time at EM, a couple weeks earlier.  That said, I was at my limit on this swim and would never swim this hard in an a Half-IM but it seems to validate what I thought was true in that I think I'm about 36 minutes or so H-IM swim fit at this point in the year.

Lot's of fun and a great day!  Onward and upward!