First OWS Swim of the Season! YAY!

Yep, Dr. Z. and I had heard rumor of people swimming in Mirror Lake despite the fact that at this time last year the water was still in the 40's due to an unusually cold spring, but we were leery of getting our hopes up too much until we tried it ourselves. Our original plan of going after work Thursday was trashed when a nasty thunderstorm rolled in. (In fact we've had thunderstorms every afternoon/evening for three days now, which is VERY unusual around here.)

Yesterday was more of the same - like I said, weird with the thunderstorms around here, but today we finally got to test it out BEFORE the afternoon thunderstorms arrived (and they did).

First of all, there is nothing sadder than a Northern triathlete trying to get on her wetsuit after almost nine months of pool swimming. Even with liberal application of BodyGlide it took me FOREVER. The fact that I'm still five pounds over race weight didn't help.

So...it was time to jump in. I was pleasantly surprised by how RELATIVELY warm it was (we're still talking in the 50's). My hands had me worried at first and I had to do a lot of "putting the face in the water and blowing bubbles" to get used to it, but once I started actually swimming - no problem at all. We swam out to the Mini-Tri buoy and back, which was 400 meters. At first I had to take a lot of breaks because as a "touch-turner" in the pool I'm used to a millisecond break every 25 yds. We came back to shore and after shooting the breeze with some other triathletes decided to do one more round. This time I made it the entire way back without any rest. Not only that, I didn't have the usual clausterphobic feeling I get when I start using a wetsuit again. All in all, I was EXTREMELY happy with how smoothly the transition to open water went. Yay!



Post-swim grin and proof I wasn't the only one crazy enough to get in the water.