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Welland MSO Open Water Swim race report
After yesterday's epic 101k loop of the Muskoka half-iron course I felt like I could use a day to recover. So I packed my speedos and headed down to Welland for the Under the Four Bridges MSO Open Water Provincial Championship race. Well at least I got to sleep in a bit, since it was an 11:30 start.
Because last week's outer ear infection hasn't completely cleared up yet, I brought an ear plug for the right side. On the drive down I tried a test fit, but I couldn't make a seal. Heating it up on the windshield heater vent worked surprisingly well—not unlike what I imagine a hot ear waxing might feel like.
I got there just in time for the start of the 10k race.
Someone was actually crazy enough to attempt the entire race doing butterfly.
We boarded the bus for the pre-race meeting, then were driven to the start 3km out. I was surprised to hear that there is no drafting or contact allowed.
The entrance into the canal.
As I was setting my auto lap settings on my GPS, I overheard someone asking if a stroke timer would be allowed in the race. It clicks or beeps every 1.3 seconds so that the swimmer could keep steady. The official radio'd the question in and it was okay'd. I asked him if GPSes would be allowed, and he "doubted" it.
I'm sure I could have made an argument that it's not really an aid during the race, particularly if I hadn't set the auto lap. But there's really no harm in just swimming for the sake of swimming. Someone involved with the event said the third bridge we went under was about 1 km away from the finish, so I'd just pull a split off that. Watches were still allowed, so why not?
My race was pretty good. A little slow, but good. I wasn't there to sprint, I just wanted to finish relatively strongly. I passed a few people in the beginning and then for the next hour I was all alone. I passed time by switching from my usual bilateral breathing to a different count (I'm not sure what it's called, but it's three strokes breathing every second stroke, then five strokes without breathing). It was fun to play around a bit and see how my body would respond. I played around with head positioning, twisting my mouth. It was just relaxed and fun.
Under the second bridge I made a mental note that I was around 34 minutes, and I hit the third bridge at exactly 40 minutes. If the third bridge was 1k from the finish that would have meant that I was on track for a 1 hour finish (at 2:00/100m). I used that info to calculate the approximate distance I was from the finish, so at 52 minutes I knew that I was exactly 400m away. It looked a little bit further, but I picked up my pace anyway.
When I finshed the race I checked my watch and saw that I finished in 1:09. Where did the extra nine minutes come from? A quick gmap-pedometer revealed that the bridge was actually 1.2 k from the finish. That sprint that I thought was 400m from the finish was actually more like 700m. It makes sense why I ran out of steam earlier than I would have liked.
Here you can see the marks on the front of my shoulders from my stubble rubbing it. I forgot to bring vaseline to prevent that. What you probably can't see in this picture is the irritation from the level #1 armpit trim. Mental note for next time—that's too short!
I was still a little disappointed with a finish of 2:20/100m. I know I've never done that distance before, and I'm really happy about that, but I was hoping to get under 2:00. That's a big difference. Last weekend I was swimming at 2:00 naked, so I should have been able to keep in that range. So I'm really not sure why. Plus without the GPS track I can't see how bad my navigation was (although it was a very easy course to sight, being right in the canal). At least it's a good prep for next weekend's 3.8k L.O.S.T. race.
About ten minutes after I finished my swim there were reports of thunder on the other end. They ended up pulling everyone in, then the wind picked up and it started pouring. If you can't tell, hot pink was the theme for the day. Here I am hanging out with Ken, who was first place in my class and the overall winner of the 3k race.
I think about half the 10k racers finished, but none of the 5k swimmers were able to before being pulled. Standing in front of me in the last picture was a woman who was pulled from the 10k when she was only 500m from the finish.
Here's Ken accepting his award...
...and me in second place with my medal!
A 1.86 k swim race and what over 40 km of self-powered travel over water in a weekend looks like
This weekend was a total convergence of awesome. B and S invited me up to B's cottage in Honey Harbour for the long weekend. There was also a swim race at Kempenfest on Saturday that coach Ayesha told us about. I wanted to do both, but I didn't want to bother B to have to boat me back to shore early on Saturday morning, only to pick me up again on Saturday afternoon. I considered borrowing their canoe, but without knowing the condition of everything I didn't want to take a chance.
When B and S were driving up on Friday, I got a message from S about the kayak rental place along the way. I've been meaning to rent from them again for ages, so I gave them a call and reserved my fibreglass sea kayak for the weekend. Perfect.
Saturday morning I woke up super early and got my swim and cottage gear together, packing as light as possible. Unfortunately I had to include a MacBook Air so I could get some work done at the cottage [ugh]. The registration form said that marshal was at 9:00, and the race started at 10:00. I wasn't sure what marshall was. I figured it was a pre-race meeting that we all had to be there for. Since I was worried about traffic (which there was a surprising amount of), I ended up getting to the race site at 8:30, even after making a few pit stops. It just gave me a lot of time to warm up, and make a half-dozen trips to the car to drop off whatever I wasn't using. I had time to set my Garmin to auto-lap every 100m, so I could keep track on course, and when Ayesha showed up I got to see her warm-up routine.
Soundtrack: Sam Roberts - Without a Map
The race its self was pretty fun. It was a diamond-shaped course, which was supposedly 500m between buoys. At the first buoy I realized that my sighting was actually pretty decent. My Garmin signalled 500m when I was just about 10m from the buoy. A lot of the swimmers seemed to be relatively unfamiliar with open water. There were a lot of swimmers who were zig zagging right in front of me. I'd draft one for a while, then they'd veer sharp the the right or left. I'd keep straight, then they'd pass right across from me in the other direction. I tried one of coach Kelvin's rear-sighting techniques to make sure I hadn't veered too far off-course, and I felt a lot more confident about where I was heading.
I passed the second buoy before my Garmin signalled 1000m. I was sure I must have missed a beep in some traffic, so I didn't worry much about it. But when I rounded the third buoy I knew something was up. Around this point I felt like I was picking up the pace, but looking at the stats now, it looks like I actually slowed down a bit. The first quarter was fairly hard, the second and third were slower and more consistent, but the fourth... well I must have been fairly tired. Maybe sloppy. I was having trouble sighting, since I didn't know exactly what I was aiming for on shore, so I think that had some to do with it. The last 150m were gold though. I actually picked up the pace and finished up strong.
On the map below you can see where the lap marker went off for me, and how the diamond shaped course was a bit truncated by the furthest buoy being too far toward the shore.
I wasn't suprised that Ayesha finished third overall and first in her division, but I was very surprised that I got third in mine. I'm pretty sure it's because there weren't a whole lot of "seniors" (aged 25-39) there, because I don't think a 2:03 pace is really worthy of a podium, but I'll take it! It was pretty awesome to look at the plaques of past race winners to see Ayesha's name there in 2008 too. It looks like to win I'll have to shave about 10 minutes off my time, which might be a bit of a stretch, but I've got a long winter of training ahead of me, so you never know!
B's family's cottage is the perfect cottage in the perfect area. As always there was a great group of friends there, and what more can you say?After dropping off my gear I went for another swim, recovery drinks, waited a bit, had a couple Guinness (they're technically light beers, so it's totally fine), and passed out on the kitchen table. It was a long day.
The next morning I went for a 13k kayak trip around the area, including a stop at Beausoleil Island. It wasn't too busy when I started, but by noon the boat traffic was in full force. There was one channel which had a lot of yachts going through. I wanted to avoid it the next day, but I got a little carried away.
When I got back I showed L's son a bit about how to get around in the kayak, and I followed him swimming to the end of the bay. He picked it up quickly. At first I was swimming right beside him, but about 200m in he just left me behind. I thought I was supposed to be keeping an eye on him. After another homemade recovery drink (FTR, homo milk + sugar ≠ "white chocolate milk," even if you plug your nose), I went out for another swim.
That night was a bit earlier, then I got out for another kayak. I looked on google maps for a quieter route, and found one long channel that ended near the 400. I followed it down, and it kept getting quieter and quieter. Eventually there were just two fishing boats in a small bay with a small channel back at the end. It was a small path through a marsh, but it was unbelievably quiet. No one around, just dragonflies.
Soundtrack: Radiohead - Codex
Excuse the shaking and low quality of the video. I was trying not to lose my balance swatting flies. I wasn't sure if I could perform a self-rescue if I did manage to roll, and with no one around I was a little nervous about having to dredge through the marsh.
After that kayak excursion I did a quick wetsuit swim. I was actually pretty surprised how much faster I was in the wetsuit, and how sore my shoulders had gotten by this point. I went from about a 2:03 100m time to a quite respectible 1:48. That's about a 15% improvement, which means I've got a lot of form work to do. I think I'm going to try to make a couple pool sessions before Ironman Muskoka.
Final totals for the weekend: 6800 m swim and 34 km in the kayak. Wow.
Here are a map overlay of all the swimming in the bay, and one of all the kayaking in the area. Too much awesome for one weekend.
Soundtrack for the drive home: Washed Out - Amor Fati
Which guy came third in senior men at Kempenfest? This guy!
With coach Ayesha, who killed it with her insane speed.
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