Today, we did the 2006 Salmon Swim, a charity swim benefiting the Puget Sound Blood Center and a women's center I don't remember the name of. Six of us decided to do it: Deb and I, Polita (who I work with) and her husband Owen, and Todd and Karolina. We were supposed to be to the park at around 7. As luck would have it, we woke up this morning to clouds and drizzle. For the first time in well over a month. Oh well, you really can't get any wetter.
But to add to the challenge, the salmon fishing season was extended this year, so the lake had lots of fishing boats on it. We took Todd's boat down to Medina Park for the start and there was a small but decent sized group of fellow crazy people. Some didn't even have wetsuits
The visibility on the lake wasn't too bad, but even so, it was a long way over to Madison Park. In this picture you can barely make out the condos next to the park we were swimming to. Note these condo buildings are about 10 stories tall.
We knew it was a bit over two miles, so we figured it would take a bit more than an hour (I did the 1.2 miles at Lake Stevens in 36, so being less than double that...).
After a fair amount of milling about, we separated into a fast group and a slower group. Deb went with the slower group, the rest of us with the faster group. By the time we started, it had stopped drizzling, and the water was a very comfortable 74 degrees.
The swim itself was fairly uneventful. I was one of the slower members of the group, but since we only had one escort boat, the plan was to regroup every so often. We had some very fast swimmers, but they would stop about every 15 minutes and let everyone get back together. I felt very safe the whole time, from boats at least. The middle of the lake was fairly frustrating. There were swells and a fair amount of chop out there. Just enough to break up your rhythm. The first half of the swim went quickly, and is often the case, the 3rd quarter was the toughest. It seemed like the buildings weren't coming any closer. And our group did come across several fishing boats (they were fishing, not moving), so it was kind of hard to sight the boat and figure out which side the lines were on, so you could go the other way. It turned out not to be a big deal.
But, bit-by-bit, they did. I got a nasty calf cramp about 300 meters from being done. Scared me for a second, but given I don't really kick anyway, I forced my self to ignore it and get back to swimming and it worked itself out. The whole transit ended up taking about 1:20.
Turned out to be fun. I've always wanted to swim across the lake, but had imagined going directly across rather than the "scenic" route. The other problem is that the lake really bothered my sinuses today. I was pretty stuffy all day and just started to get better tonight. The other bonus is that this was almost exactly the distance of an Ironman swim. So, I can do it, but I'll definitely need to log more swim time. I was pretty wiped out for most of the day.