Splash and Dash Race Report

I did this race for some open-water swimming practice.
And, in general, swimming practice since I failed to make it the pool.  (Actually, I did make it the pool once but had issues with my goggles so ended up in the hot tub instead).

I've done these before, as chronicled here and here.  The number of times that I choose to swim in that nasty lake astounds me.  Usually, I tag with friends to these little races.  But not this time - I drove myself to this race and did it because I knew it was good for me.
I spend a lot of reminding little people that sometimes we have to do things we simply don't want to do.
Like wait in restaurants for our food:


Or wash our hair:


Or take a nap, eat our vegetables, blow our nose or put our feet in separate pajamas legs:


I guess I ingrained that advice in my own head because I bailed on my running friends and took myself to the lake.

Even when you go to a race alone though, you are never alone once you arrive. The first person I saw was Brian. We've been running together for 8 years.


We hung out a lot more before I had kids and he decided to an Ironman. Back then, it was about Burning Man!


Anyway,
Since my goggles have a leak, I borrowed a pair from Shelly.
She said she put in "anti-fog drops." I had no idea these existed! I just assumed that everyone had foggy glasses.
I can't say that I had fun during the swim, but it was nice to have vision.

It was still hard to spot the green buoys when going into the sun though. At one point, I had to stop and look around. I am so glad that I did though because I needed to do a major re-adjustment in order to swim in directly towards the buoy.
I am not sure if Brian's goggles were foggy, but not only did he swim past a buoy, he swam past the finish.

1000 meters took 19:47.

When you get out of the lake, you run over a timing mat. That mat separates the swim time and run time.
Then you run up a grass hill to your transition area. You peel off your wetsuit and put on your running shoes.
Everything was fine until I got to my shoes - they would not go on!
Basically, I had the same problem as I did with my bike shoes last weekend.
Wide foot + orthotic + no sock + wetness = major frustration.
Eventually, I got my shoes on - it just took 3 minutes.

I started to run.
Even though I did a slow mile before the race, I did not feel warmed up.
Mile 1 was 6:09.
But then I found my groove.  The leaders had reached the turn-around and were running back.
I recognized the first two as professionals. I was not going to catch them.
The next two though were within my reach. I passed them both - and then Lewis Elliot passed me.
I chase everyone, even professional males.
Mile 2 was 5:49.
I started to get tired after that but I occasionally looked down at my Garmin and saw a sub-6 pace. That legitimized my fatigue, which made it easier to push through.
Mile 3 was 5:57.
After a short sprint to the finish at 5:37 pace, I wound up with a major PR.

The problem here is that the documented time provided by timing-chip includes the entire transition period.
It begs the question, Is it a real PR if it's not officially recorded?
I am going to go with yes because my Garmin says so.


The distance is .04 short because I lost signal under the freeway passes. But you see the average pace.
And then I went on to run an additional 7 miles with the extraordinary Janie and got some duathlon tips from Matthew Russell.

I am so excited that next week I won't have to get wet!  I feel like I paid my dues by swimming this weekend and so now I can not swim for the rest of the week.  Yay!