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!