This morning I did my longest open water swim and I learned a lot! My goal was to finish the swim portion in under 55 minutes. I ended up arriving a little later than I wanted to because I took a wrong turn on my way to the event. This put me behind schedule a bit. For those of you that know me, I typically show up last minute to a road running race! I HAVE to stop doing this. I was rushed to put on my wetsuit and I don't think I did a very good job at putting it on (I did not put glide on my neck, so I gave myself a nice hickey! See pic below....lol). I also didn't give myself very much time to get into the water and to get acclimated to the temperature. Once the swim started, I got really claustrophobic in my wetsuit and felt my heart rate get out of control. I was breathing really hard and started panicking. I knew that I needed to get this under control right away, so I rolled over on my back until my heart rate went down and my breathing became more normal. Then I got going! My sighting went a lot better today than during the Tempe Tri a few weeks ago. I actually felt really strong and felt myself getting stronger the longer I was out there. My official swim time was 58:03. I didn't meet my goal, but I learned a lot and foresee next weekends Half Ironman swim going a lot better!
After the swim, I transitioned to the run. I had a hard time getting off my wetsuit, so I was in transition a little longer than I would have liked.
The run went really well. The official times haven't been posted yet, but I think the 5K was right around 28:30 or so. I keep my pace even for the entire 3 miles and felt strong!
Here's a few things to note for my next race:
1. Get there plenty early enough to get transition ready and get my wetsuit on (15 minutes is not enough time!)
2. Be sure to put glide on my body.... lesson learned from all the chafing I got today!
3. Get into the water early and swim a little to warm up
4. DON'T freak out!
5. Have Fun!!
I think Coach Diane will be proud of me for this swim. I didn't have a great time, but I learned so much which was the purpose of this swim! 5 minutes into the swim I was worried that I may be a DNF, but as soon as that thought came into my head, I pushed it out and was determined to turn things around. This puts me one step closer to being ready for Ironman.
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