BEAR LAKE MONSTER SWIM!

Last Saturday was the Bear Lake Monster Swim.  I had a blast and did a fabulous job!  My goal was to swim it in less than 3 hours and 30 minutes.  I did it in 03:09.13.  I got 6th over all and I was the 4th woman to finish.  You can see the results here.  I was also number 13 which is my lucky water polo number!  It was a great day and although I was pretty nervous before the start, once we got going I relaxed.

It is amazing how clear this lake is.  And I got to stare into it for three hours.  It is a gorgeous blue-green.  The water temperature was around 70 degrees and it was perfect.  I was one of the 19 swimmers who did not use a wetsuit.  The best way to describe this water was crisp.

I was one of the straighter swimmers.  There was one other who followed us, Matt and me, but only for a little ways.  Then they followed everyone else who went farther south.  Matt had his gps and we had our mountain sight directions.  I don't know why everyone else went so far south?  I am pretty lucky in that I swim pretty straight.  I just find my marker (usually a specific notch on the mountain) and aim my head towards it.  I am glad that Matt had his gps, we might have gone with the others if we weren't so confident.  Matt measured us at about 6 1/2 miles.  But I will still call it 7. 

Right around 4.5 miles it got really hard.  I kept swimming and it felt like we had gone so far.  Then I would ask Matt and it would be only about 1/2 mile.  So I would put my head down and plow through again.  We stopped several times throughout the race.  Matt was the best support kayaker!  He was really good at keeping me on track both in my direction and timing.

I drank water and eat a couple of those Stinger gel packs.  They were not too bad.  This brand just tastes like you are eating a packet of honey.  I did have one before the race that had some caffeine in it.  But the others didn't.  I also had a chocolate one that I eat after the practice at Deer Creek the weekend before.  That one was like eating a packet of frosting, yuck!

The hardest part was the last 1 1/2 miles because I could see the big red arch that was the finish.  Then I started seeing little dots that were people.  They all slowly got bigger and bigger.  That part seemed to drag out forever.

The finish was pretty rough.  It was rocky, but that wasn't the hard part for me.  I just could not stand up.  I wasn't dizzy or anything like that.  I had just been swimming in a horizontal position and had not been putting any weight on my legs for three hours.  So they were not used to it and refused to support the rest of me.  It took me about 3 tries to stand up and crawl out of the water.  Here is a photo of me getting out (and Matt was right next to me, cheering me on). Click here.

I had a blast!  Thank you to the SLOW (Salt Lake Open Water) team for hosting such a great event!

Misadventures at Deer Creek Reservoir

Yesterday was the day that Matt and I planned to practice as a team (kayaker & swimmer) at Deer Creek.  We got the kayak from Shawn.  Unfortunately, I don't think it is going to work for us.  The spot we went was perfect!  I pushed Matt off the shore then dove in and set straight away to swimming.  When I looked back, Matt was floating around in circles.  He could not get the kayak to go in the proper direction because it had a flat bottom without any keel or rudder!  After about 10 minutes of us trying to get it to work, Matt finally had to bail out.  The boat was full of water!  I powered us to shore.  I had to do breaststroke, yuck!  It was a very bad experience for Matt.  He almost threw in the towel.  But when we got home he found a good kayak at REI to rent and we picked it up.

So this morning we went again.  The beach we found was even better than last time.  It is in the same area but at the end of the inlet. The new kayak worked perfectly!  We went up and back the inlet twice for a total of 4 miles.  My lower back kept cramping and spasming.  But if I stretch at every mile like I did at Deer Creek, I think I can make it across Bear Lake.  I really hope that we can am well and only go 7 miles instead of 8.  4 miles was tough enough for me!  I am a bit nervous about the 8 but now I have some good open water lake swims under my belt and I am feeling more confident!

Here is a link to the bay we went to.  I believe it is called Wallsburg. 
 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4115778,-111.4914632,15z

I have a kayak for the race!

There is a kayak sitting in Matt's truck right now.  Thanks to Shawn for letting us borrow it for the Bear Lake Race.  I am getting really excited for it.  My shoulder randomly started hurting over the weekend, but it is better now.  Matt and I plan to go to Deer Creek to practice this weekend.  It should be a lot of fun!

Here is the workout we had this morning:

300 Choice
200 Drill (3 strokes/6 kicks)

8x75 (25 sprint/50 recovery)

9x100 [3@1:35/3@1:30/3@1:25]
*do groups of 3 on the same time, to figure your time take your fastest possible 100 interval for the last round then add 5 for the second round and 5 more for the first round

500 pull

200 Cool Down

2,700 yards total

Tuesday Masters

I coached yesterday but didn't have time to enter the workout.  I cannot quite remember what it was.  I will think about it an try to post it later.

I have been having shoulder pain.  My right shoulder hurts when I put pressure on it when my arm is extended.  And other times too.  This could be very bad for my swim across Bear Lake in less than two weeks.  It felt okay when I was swimming this morning, as long as I focused on the second half of my pull.

Here is the workout Jamie gave us this morning:

300 Warm Up

3x100 build @1:30

20x25 @:20

300 Kick

14x25 @:20

100 Kick

6x25 @:20

 2,000 yards total

I would recommend adding some cool down in.  I didn't have time for it though.

Open Water Pool Practice

Shawn gave us two great workouts in a row (Tuesday and today).  Yesterday was a bit of a sprint workout and today was open water training.  This morning all the lane lines were out and he had made some buoys out of water polo balls.  He gave us some great pointers on how to swim in open water.  Don't be afraid of touching people or being touched.  Only lift your head a little bit to sight your path.  Avoid breathing in a wave.  It was a lot of fun!  Although I didn't really get to measure my yards, I am going to put down 2,000.  It is amazing how much harder it it to swim open water style.  There is a video on the Olympus Aquatics Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/olympusaquatics. And yes, I am the one in the front with the blue cap!

Here is what I remember of yesterday's practice:

Warm Up:
200 Free
200 Choice
100 Kick

6x[50 free; 25 fast]

Main set (twice~the second time we went through in the reverse order.)
100 moderate
25 Fast
75 moderate
50 Fast
50 moderate
75 Fast
25 moderate
100 Fast
@25 sec/25yd base

10x25 a random mix between fast kicking and breath control

200 cool down

2,400 yards

*I think that I remembered the whole workout!