Cap 2K open water swim 2015 race report
I've really been embracing this whole Off Season thing. Ultraman last year, two 50k trail runs, and then.. not a whole lot of anything since then. Some riding in preparation for the Easter Hill Country Tour, but maybe 9 hours of riding since then, 3 of which were commuting. (Maybe I'll write a Life Update at some point and talk about that a bit. Probably not.)
I'm still having a lot of heel pain (could be plantar fasciitis, could be something else; I have spent many months formulating a plan to go see someone about it, but so far it hasn't yet come to fruition), so after 35 miles of experimental running in February, which resulted in further advancing my heel pain, I ran zero miles in March, 6.5 miles in April and 3 so far in May. I'm not sure what that spells for my tentative Philly Marathon plans in November, but it's probably not good.
But I haven't been doing NOTHING! I've been swimming! A lot! And really enjoying it!
Further details about that will go into my may-not-even-happen life update post, because this is supposed to actually be a race report, so I should get to that.
Since I've been swimming so much, I figured I'd check my 2015 event list to see what swims events are out there. Cap 2K! I've heard about it in passing, but I knew very little about it. And it's right at the beginning of tri season (in fact, sharing a day this year with The Rookie Tri), so it's never worked out in my schedule. Until now!
Except it seemed scary. Lots of logistics, because it's a point-to-point swim, and doing an event for the first time without some sort of companionship can be pretty scary. So I decided to forget about it, until I was talking with Kristi one day, and she mentioned she was doing it! Suddenly I had a friend to make it less scary, and so I went ahead and signed up.
Perching on a rock with Kristi before the swim.
And I'm really glad I had a friend, because man, we sat around for a really, really long time once we got there, doing nothing. We're both early arrivers in general, plus we had planned to park at Deep Eddy (the location of the after-party) and walk to the start line, which would have taken ~20 minutes. Instead we found Deep Eddy closed off for the Sunshine 10k, and had to go park down at the start line, across from Mozart's. That meant we got there REALLY early. Check-in took up a few of those seconds, and then we sat on a rock in the shade and enjoyed the beautiful weather and caught up on life.
At some point we gathered for the pre-race speech, most of which I couldn't hear. But Kristi had done the race before, so she filled me in on the important things, which was mostly that you had to swim under the bridge on the RIGHT side, because the left side is too shallow, and then after you go under the bridge, you cut left to get over to the finish line at the rowing dock. Got it.
After the speech, all the swimmers headed down the path toward the water. Just before the dock, we were handed a garbage bag, and we stripped down and put all of our possessions in the bags. We stuck a sticker with our number on the front of the bag, double checked to be sure we had all the things one needs to swim and nothing more, and handed it over to be transported to the finish line. All of those things being: swim suit (regular), goggles, event-issued swim cap. This swim follows the American Swimming Association Open Water Rules, which means no special suits, no snorkels, no fins, no heart rate monitors, and no WATCHES. That one's always weird to me, especially as a triathlete who is basically always wearing a watch.
Oh, and no drafting, which is very strange after years of triathlon swims, where you're desperately trying to find people to draft off of.
We got to the dock, and we had two options at that point. The startline for the race was ~350-400 meters downstream from the dock. You could either hop in one of the two ferries on offer, and they would transport you down to start line, or you could go ahead and jump in and do a little 350-400 meter warmup down to the start line.
I opted to do a little warmup swim, and I'm SO glad I did. This was actually my favorite part of the whole event. I jumped in (feet first, no diving) got my bearings, then started an easy, relaxed swim down the middle of Town Lake. The water was probably around 70 or 72 degrees, and it felt absolutely perfect. We were pretty spread out, especially with so many people taking the boats, so I had my own water and just stretched out and swam with a big smile on my face. Okay, I was a little nervous that one of the boats transporting swimmers was going to run me over, but I never even saw them pass me, so I guess they weren't too close.
This is upstream from where we swam, but equally pretty.
Once I got to the start line buoy, I had.. no idea how long it was until the race started. No watch! So I just started treading water with the rest of the folks around me. I ended up right with Kristi and Pete, so we chatted and treaded. I was a little jealous of the people in wetsuits (wetsuits were not strictly allowed, according to ASA open water rules, but they had a special division for them, who were competing only against each other), because they could just float in the water and not exert any effort treading.
After a few minutes, they (uh, I forget what.. blew a whistle? an airhorn? whatever it was, they did it 5 times), which was, I think, the 5 minute warning. People started to negotiate to the spots they wanted to be, and, as Kristi had promised me, it really wasn't all that congested. I didn't really intend to be one row back from the very front, but there I was.
Then roughly 5 minutes later, they (whatevered) for us to go!
It was definitely no triathlon. I never touched anyone else or got touched. It was crowded for a minute, maybe, but then things spread out. It was just a really calm start, which was delightful. And then I swam.
Even though I've done a lot of swimming this year, this was only my second open water swim of the year, so I wasn't very practiced at sighting, and I don't think I did a great job of swimming straight. I mostly just tried to keep the right bank roughly the same distance away from me at all times, which probably meant I followed the curve of the river, which is probably not ideal, but at least I didn't ever go careening into the shore. Either shore.
And really nothing much happened for a long time, other than swimming. I was actually a little nervous coming into this race (and had trouble sleeping the night before, which hasn't happened for a while!), because I had no clue how to pace myself. 2000 meters isn't that much, compared to my normal masters swim workout, but we usually don't just swim 2000 contiguous meters. I've done so in triathlons before, but I've always known that I needed to hold back a little, to save something for the bike and the run. I didn't have to worry about that here. Once I was done swimming, I was just done. But what if I went out way too fast and was dying by the end? Or what if I finished, and then felt like I could have kept going for another hour?
I think I did a decent job. I tried to be pushing myself all the time, but not hyperventilating or dying. A few times I caught myself zoning out, and had to get my head back in the game, but mostly I was fairly present.
I also swallowed a ton of water. I do that pretty consistently anyway, but it's always extra bad when you're in Town Lake. Each time I'd swallow some, I'd grimace and think, "Crap, I'm gonna get sick." (Spoiler: I didn't.) At least I was well hydrated.
The only real landmark on the course is the MoPac bridge. You can baaaarely see it in the distance when the swim starts, and then it slowly gets larger as you get closer. But so, so, so slowly. I looked up at one point and it was definitely closer! Maybe I'm almost done! But then 10 minutes later, it really didn't seem all that much closer.
But after a long, long, long time of swimming (how long? I couldn't tell you. I HAD NO WATCH AAAAHHH), I finally got up to the bridge and then into its shadow. It was pretty neat.. every time I'd sight or breathe, I could hear the people on the bridge cheering. I decided that Betsy and David had finished the Sunshine 10k and then come out to the bridge to cheer for me. I knew it wasn't true, but pretending like they were up there cheering my name made me smile, so I went with it.
After the bridge, I could see a big red buoy in the distance, so I angled across the lake toward it. I knew that was either the finish line or right near it, so I tried to pick up the pace and finish strong. As I got up to the big red buoy, I saw that there were little red buoys and a rope in the water, all forming a kind of finish chute, so I followed someone in, swam up to the dock, and grabbed on to the dock next to the person ahead of me when they did.
They'd explained in the pre-race meeting how this would work, but it was a little confusing until you experienced it. You were supposed to grab the dock, but stay in the order you finished in. Then someone walked down the dock and handed out popsicle sticks with numbers written on them, in the order you came in. Someone handed me a popsicle stick that said 78. Evidently I had finished in 78th place! I had no idea what that meant, really. Nor did I have any idea what my time was.
We scooted along the dock by our hands, since it was still too deep to stand, then eventually got down to the end and pulled ourselves out (it took my two tries to heave myself out... tired arms). We then walked by a table with some race officials, and they made note of our number and our popsicle stick number, to record the final results.
After that, I met up with Kristi and Pete, who were standing nearby, and had cheered for me as I came in. They were, of course, completely dry, since they had finished 14th and 16th, respectively.
Yeeeah, Kristi's really fast. She's also in my age group. I figured between her probably winning our age group, and me coming in way back in 78th place, I probably hadn't placed in the top 3 in my age group, but I'd had a really good time, so I didn't much care.
We trekked up to the road and retrieved our gear bags, put on some shoes and towels, and then walked down the Town Lake Trail over to Deep Eddy. We stood in a long, long line for some post-race tacos (Maudie's, delicious), and then Kristi checked in with her family. Unfortunately she had to get back home, so we couldn't stay for the awards, especially since we still had a very long walk ahead of us to get back to where we parked the car.
Lake hair!
It was actually several days before the results were put online, so it was several days before I even knew what my time was! I was a little disappointed when I saw it: 37:01. It's actually a perfectly respectable time, but it's 1:42/100 yards, and given how much swimming I've been doing, and how much of it has been at a faster average pace, I was kinda hoping to swim a little bit faster. Granted, none of my swimming has been open water, and it's a very different world out there in the lake than in a calm, lined, flip-turning pool. So I've decided I'm happy with my time!
Aaaaand I came in 2nd in my age group, which was surprising! (Also despite what my popsicle stick said, the final results have me at 73rd overall, not 78th.)
I told Kristi I was going to tell people that I was 2nd in my age group behind her, and we fought it out at the end, with her just barely edging me out at the end for the win. In reality, Kristi finished 5.5 minutes ahead of me, and was one of the first not-highschool-aged females to finish. She's such a badass.
So my takeaway is: it was a ton of fun, even if I would like to have been faster, my arms were sore the next day, so I'm really happy with my effort, and I would like to do more only-swim events in the future!
I'm still having a lot of heel pain (could be plantar fasciitis, could be something else; I have spent many months formulating a plan to go see someone about it, but so far it hasn't yet come to fruition), so after 35 miles of experimental running in February, which resulted in further advancing my heel pain, I ran zero miles in March, 6.5 miles in April and 3 so far in May. I'm not sure what that spells for my tentative Philly Marathon plans in November, but it's probably not good.
But I haven't been doing NOTHING! I've been swimming! A lot! And really enjoying it!
Further details about that will go into my may-not-even-happen life update post, because this is supposed to actually be a race report, so I should get to that.
Since I've been swimming so much, I figured I'd check my 2015 event list to see what swims events are out there. Cap 2K! I've heard about it in passing, but I knew very little about it. And it's right at the beginning of tri season (in fact, sharing a day this year with The Rookie Tri), so it's never worked out in my schedule. Until now!
Except it seemed scary. Lots of logistics, because it's a point-to-point swim, and doing an event for the first time without some sort of companionship can be pretty scary. So I decided to forget about it, until I was talking with Kristi one day, and she mentioned she was doing it! Suddenly I had a friend to make it less scary, and so I went ahead and signed up.
Perching on a rock with Kristi before the swim.
And I'm really glad I had a friend, because man, we sat around for a really, really long time once we got there, doing nothing. We're both early arrivers in general, plus we had planned to park at Deep Eddy (the location of the after-party) and walk to the start line, which would have taken ~20 minutes. Instead we found Deep Eddy closed off for the Sunshine 10k, and had to go park down at the start line, across from Mozart's. That meant we got there REALLY early. Check-in took up a few of those seconds, and then we sat on a rock in the shade and enjoyed the beautiful weather and caught up on life.
At some point we gathered for the pre-race speech, most of which I couldn't hear. But Kristi had done the race before, so she filled me in on the important things, which was mostly that you had to swim under the bridge on the RIGHT side, because the left side is too shallow, and then after you go under the bridge, you cut left to get over to the finish line at the rowing dock. Got it.
After the speech, all the swimmers headed down the path toward the water. Just before the dock, we were handed a garbage bag, and we stripped down and put all of our possessions in the bags. We stuck a sticker with our number on the front of the bag, double checked to be sure we had all the things one needs to swim and nothing more, and handed it over to be transported to the finish line. All of those things being: swim suit (regular), goggles, event-issued swim cap. This swim follows the American Swimming Association Open Water Rules, which means no special suits, no snorkels, no fins, no heart rate monitors, and no WATCHES. That one's always weird to me, especially as a triathlete who is basically always wearing a watch.
Oh, and no drafting, which is very strange after years of triathlon swims, where you're desperately trying to find people to draft off of.
We got to the dock, and we had two options at that point. The startline for the race was ~350-400 meters downstream from the dock. You could either hop in one of the two ferries on offer, and they would transport you down to start line, or you could go ahead and jump in and do a little 350-400 meter warmup down to the start line.
I opted to do a little warmup swim, and I'm SO glad I did. This was actually my favorite part of the whole event. I jumped in (feet first, no diving) got my bearings, then started an easy, relaxed swim down the middle of Town Lake. The water was probably around 70 or 72 degrees, and it felt absolutely perfect. We were pretty spread out, especially with so many people taking the boats, so I had my own water and just stretched out and swam with a big smile on my face. Okay, I was a little nervous that one of the boats transporting swimmers was going to run me over, but I never even saw them pass me, so I guess they weren't too close.
This is upstream from where we swam, but equally pretty.
Once I got to the start line buoy, I had.. no idea how long it was until the race started. No watch! So I just started treading water with the rest of the folks around me. I ended up right with Kristi and Pete, so we chatted and treaded. I was a little jealous of the people in wetsuits (wetsuits were not strictly allowed, according to ASA open water rules, but they had a special division for them, who were competing only against each other), because they could just float in the water and not exert any effort treading.
After a few minutes, they (uh, I forget what.. blew a whistle? an airhorn? whatever it was, they did it 5 times), which was, I think, the 5 minute warning. People started to negotiate to the spots they wanted to be, and, as Kristi had promised me, it really wasn't all that congested. I didn't really intend to be one row back from the very front, but there I was.
Then roughly 5 minutes later, they (whatevered) for us to go!
It was definitely no triathlon. I never touched anyone else or got touched. It was crowded for a minute, maybe, but then things spread out. It was just a really calm start, which was delightful. And then I swam.
Even though I've done a lot of swimming this year, this was only my second open water swim of the year, so I wasn't very practiced at sighting, and I don't think I did a great job of swimming straight. I mostly just tried to keep the right bank roughly the same distance away from me at all times, which probably meant I followed the curve of the river, which is probably not ideal, but at least I didn't ever go careening into the shore. Either shore.
And really nothing much happened for a long time, other than swimming. I was actually a little nervous coming into this race (and had trouble sleeping the night before, which hasn't happened for a while!), because I had no clue how to pace myself. 2000 meters isn't that much, compared to my normal masters swim workout, but we usually don't just swim 2000 contiguous meters. I've done so in triathlons before, but I've always known that I needed to hold back a little, to save something for the bike and the run. I didn't have to worry about that here. Once I was done swimming, I was just done. But what if I went out way too fast and was dying by the end? Or what if I finished, and then felt like I could have kept going for another hour?
I think I did a decent job. I tried to be pushing myself all the time, but not hyperventilating or dying. A few times I caught myself zoning out, and had to get my head back in the game, but mostly I was fairly present.
I also swallowed a ton of water. I do that pretty consistently anyway, but it's always extra bad when you're in Town Lake. Each time I'd swallow some, I'd grimace and think, "Crap, I'm gonna get sick." (Spoiler: I didn't.) At least I was well hydrated.
The only real landmark on the course is the MoPac bridge. You can baaaarely see it in the distance when the swim starts, and then it slowly gets larger as you get closer. But so, so, so slowly. I looked up at one point and it was definitely closer! Maybe I'm almost done! But then 10 minutes later, it really didn't seem all that much closer.
But after a long, long, long time of swimming (how long? I couldn't tell you. I HAD NO WATCH AAAAHHH), I finally got up to the bridge and then into its shadow. It was pretty neat.. every time I'd sight or breathe, I could hear the people on the bridge cheering. I decided that Betsy and David had finished the Sunshine 10k and then come out to the bridge to cheer for me. I knew it wasn't true, but pretending like they were up there cheering my name made me smile, so I went with it.
After the bridge, I could see a big red buoy in the distance, so I angled across the lake toward it. I knew that was either the finish line or right near it, so I tried to pick up the pace and finish strong. As I got up to the big red buoy, I saw that there were little red buoys and a rope in the water, all forming a kind of finish chute, so I followed someone in, swam up to the dock, and grabbed on to the dock next to the person ahead of me when they did.
They'd explained in the pre-race meeting how this would work, but it was a little confusing until you experienced it. You were supposed to grab the dock, but stay in the order you finished in. Then someone walked down the dock and handed out popsicle sticks with numbers written on them, in the order you came in. Someone handed me a popsicle stick that said 78. Evidently I had finished in 78th place! I had no idea what that meant, really. Nor did I have any idea what my time was.
We scooted along the dock by our hands, since it was still too deep to stand, then eventually got down to the end and pulled ourselves out (it took my two tries to heave myself out... tired arms). We then walked by a table with some race officials, and they made note of our number and our popsicle stick number, to record the final results.
After that, I met up with Kristi and Pete, who were standing nearby, and had cheered for me as I came in. They were, of course, completely dry, since they had finished 14th and 16th, respectively.
Yeeeah, Kristi's really fast. She's also in my age group. I figured between her probably winning our age group, and me coming in way back in 78th place, I probably hadn't placed in the top 3 in my age group, but I'd had a really good time, so I didn't much care.
We trekked up to the road and retrieved our gear bags, put on some shoes and towels, and then walked down the Town Lake Trail over to Deep Eddy. We stood in a long, long line for some post-race tacos (Maudie's, delicious), and then Kristi checked in with her family. Unfortunately she had to get back home, so we couldn't stay for the awards, especially since we still had a very long walk ahead of us to get back to where we parked the car.
Lake hair!
It was actually several days before the results were put online, so it was several days before I even knew what my time was! I was a little disappointed when I saw it: 37:01. It's actually a perfectly respectable time, but it's 1:42/100 yards, and given how much swimming I've been doing, and how much of it has been at a faster average pace, I was kinda hoping to swim a little bit faster. Granted, none of my swimming has been open water, and it's a very different world out there in the lake than in a calm, lined, flip-turning pool. So I've decided I'm happy with my time!
Aaaaand I came in 2nd in my age group, which was surprising! (Also despite what my popsicle stick said, the final results have me at 73rd overall, not 78th.)
I told Kristi I was going to tell people that I was 2nd in my age group behind her, and we fought it out at the end, with her just barely edging me out at the end for the win. In reality, Kristi finished 5.5 minutes ahead of me, and was one of the first not-highschool-aged females to finish. She's such a badass.
So my takeaway is: it was a ton of fun, even if I would like to have been faster, my arms were sore the next day, so I'm really happy with my effort, and I would like to do more only-swim events in the future!