Did this swim race today for the 5th time. My expectations were modest (just hope to not be more than 3-4 minutes slower than prior years) and I felt tired (bigger training week this week). However, at around 12:50 I was in the water, which felt perfect (my Garmin had it at average of 70.6 degrees). There was a fair amount of wind out of the South and blowing right into the longest stretch of what is essentially a big rectangle. This would prove to be a factor.
Turns out there were 251 starters (that finished--I don't know if anyone dropped out). I started by the dock to the right of the course as we looked out to a white barrel that marked the 1st of 4 left turns. Familiar swimmers in this race included my three training partners Midge, Dan and Bonnie. Also in my Age Group was Dave Hirsch, who I've swam against a fair amount and he has beaten me by significant margins each time (in 2022 he was almost 4-minutes faster than me). But he's had shoulder surgery and is likely not fully recovered as I swam faster than him in the 1.2-Mile Bay Swim earlier this year.
Rowdy Gaines, the three time gold medalist, sent us off. And a controlled chaos soon ensued. While I love this race, I do not like the 1st 100-150 yards. First it's a mass start and I would say at least 2/3rds were there to go fast (whatever that means for each swimmer). I basically kept my head up and navigated around swimmers and tried to avoid getting pushed into the docks on my right (blind) side. That said, I experienced no significant drama and soon made the 90-degree left-hander to the South and into the wind and a fair amount of chop right into us.
About 200 yards into the race I look over and I see Midge! I can tell she sees me 2 and we start swimming next to each other. It's a rough swim but we are likely getting a small tidal push (tide into the wind makes it choppier) and the first 500 passes in 7:51. As we approach the 2nd turn buoy, I pick it up a bit and Midge follows not too far back. The 2nd 500 is in 7:21(1:28/100). We're moving!
As we head East, Midge pulls along side me and when we hit 1500 with a 8:19 500, she starts stretching it out. Also, we were now into a modest tide against us. I didn't think I should try to match her speed so I ducked in on her feet and was able to cruise along there for a good 500+ yards. Our 4th 500 was our slowest at 9:02 (tide clearly having an impact). Around this time, Hirsch came cruising past on someone else's feet and I made the relatively quick (and frankly bold) decision to bridge up and over to Dave's feet. Thankfully this worked and I dropped in on Dave's feet. Dave's a very strong swimmer, even with his on-going shoulder recovery, but his kick (while drastically better than mine) is much less pronounced than Midge's kick so it was a bit trickier to follow Dave. The next two 500s at 8:28 and 7:27 per 100 I was either on Dave's feet or towards the end I was next to him after needing to avoid some other swimmer traffic. At 2,100 yards (roughly half-way) I was at 34:21--a 68+ minute pace (vs. my 63:31 CR here).
As we headed to the final 4th turn buoy I decided to roll the dice and see if I could put some distance between Dave and I and I upped my swim cadence and I think we also were now getting a tidal push. In any event, the 7th 500 passed in 7:11. I did begin to slowly inch ahead of Dave. At the 4th turn I was about 5-yards or so in front of him.
When I rounded the turn buoy, about 700-yards from the finish (and this is oh so familiar as I have swam this stretch probably 50 times in practice) I see three guys swimming abreast about 7-10 yards in front of me and I decide to try to bridge up to them and maybe break away from Dave. I go to about 98% for about 15 seconds and I'm able to drop into their wide draft. I eased back on my effort a little bit with this assist. I looked back a couple of times for Dave but couldn't see him. We were flying now and getting a nice push and we hit 4,000 yards with a 6:20 500 (1:16/100). About 150 yards out I feel a bump to my right (blind) side and look over and see Dave!!!! 5-alarm fire! However, upon further review it wasn't him but a younger guy with the same wetsuit.
I didn't know it wasn't Dave so I literally went 100% full-tilt. I could feel "Dave" falling behind and I hammered it all the way to the finish, even passing 3 other swimmers. The last, what turned out to be, 122 yards went by at a 1:20/100 pace and this includes climbing up on a ladder and going about 10 feet to the timing mat. I put in a pretty significant effort but I seemed to recover pretty quickly--much quicker than back in July with the 1.2-mile swim. Anyways, here is how 2024 compares to my prior 4 races:
