Two If By Sea

One lingering reminder of our trail race is A’s injured IT band.  He’s not quite sure how he hurt it during the race, but since then it gives him trouble after any run longer than four miles.  And yet, he keeps running.  He is a most impatient young grasshopper.

Finally in an effort to get his IT band back to rights, he is taking some protracted time off from the longer distances.  To supplement his exercise routine, we’ve been ramping up the swimming.  Inspired by Diana Nyad, last weekend we ventured into the open water.  It helped that our area is experiencing quite the heat wave which has warmed our normally frigid ocean to a nice temperature for swimming.

The only other time A has done an open water swim was when we did a triathlon two years ago in a protected bay that had very little tidal currents.  This time around we were braving the open ocean, rolling waves and all.  A was understandably nervous.

We swam parallel to the shore north to south between two jetties about a half mile apart.  I did this swim last year in the opposite direction, and felt the undercurrent was against me.  This year, we thought we’d choose the path of least resistance.  Unfortunately that meant that A, who only breaths out of his right side, risked having incoming waves push water into his mouth every time he took a breath.

We foolishly didn’t swim in the ocean before our tri, but we did watch a few instructional videos about open water swimming online.  The most important thing we learned is that it is imperative to sight, which is periodically raising your head from the water to see your destination.  Unlike the pools we are used to swimming in, the ocean floor doesn’t have a big black line on it to help you stay the course.  Even if there were, the ocean water at our beaches is so opaque – a mottled green, to be exact – that you can’t see the bottom, much less a few inches in front of you.  I can barely see my own hand in front of me when I stroke, and sometimes not even that.

I try to practice sighting when I swim in a pool because I know it’s one of the toughest things about getting into the open water.  It takes a lot of effort to raise one’s head high enough to breach the choppy water, and I finished the half mile with a tired neck.  I often switched from freestyle to breast stroke in order to give my neck a rest, but that obviously slows me down and I ended up taking quite a bit of water up my nose.  Also having the currents push on my body can make me feel a bit nauseous.

One nice surprise was that I anticipated that staying together would be difficult, but thanks to A’s jaunty purple swim cap I had no problem keeping track of him in the big ocean.  He thinks I’m faster than he is, but the truth is we swim pretty much at the same slow, deliberate pace.

All in all, I find open water swimming extremely challenging but invigorating at the same time.  A enjoyed how raw and close to nature the experience felt.  He compared it to going from street running to trail running, times one hundred.  I guess we both liked our ocean experience well enough since we are doing it again this weekend.  This time, however, we’re picking a more protected marina area.  I’m hoping we don’t emerge from the water dripping with motor oil.