Swim Like A Mother

What a fantastic day!

Today I got to start off my first Mother's day with an ocean swim race... Yippee! Ocean Swim Racing 2009 has finally begun!

This is the Popoia Swim that my masters team puts on. We call it Flat Island Swim because we swim around the Flat Island. Get it?

Supposedly it's 1.6 miles, but I finished it in 35 minutes today so I don't think it could have been quite that long. I mean, I'm swimming pretty well right now, but I don't think I'm swimming that fast.

Funny story. You'll like this. Two years ago I was on the board of directors for the masters team so we were in charge of putting on this race. To that end, I was at the beach before the sun even came up helping to get everything set up. I saw this guy... a really HOT guy... playing with his dog on the beach that morning. He looked like such a great guy. I mean seriously- how awesome is a guy who takes his dog to play at the beach at sunrise on a Sunday morning? Especially one who is so hot? And why couldn't I find a great guy like that??

Anyway, I got back to my job of setting up the finish line flags and then the hot guy was gone. Bummer. I lamented my bad luck that I would likely never see him again. But you know what? I ended up meeting him at a Starbucks about 3 weeks later... yes, a match.com first date at the coffee shop! (It's Okay To Look) The funniest part is that I didn't actually know it was the same guy until we had been dating a while and I was telling him a story about that swim... and he said he was there that morning and saw it going on... and I was like, "OH MY GOSH YOU ARE THE HOT GUY!??!!?"

The rest is history and this year he was playing with his beautiful daughter on the beach instead of his (our) dog.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the swim this morning. It was a beautiful morning with relatively light winds so the water was pretty calm and quite clear. The only negative part was that it was low tide. And this is only really a negative because we had to swim back behind that island where there is usually a little surf. Getting pummeled by white water crashing waves when you're in about a foot of water over reef isn't so cool. And then at one point we had to get across a stretch of maybe 25 meters of water that was maybe 3 inches deep. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but it is true that it was too shallow to actually take a swim stroke and I had to scull my way across that section... just hoping I wasn't going to rip the chest off my brand new Blue Seventy suit on that shallow sharp reef. I did cut the top of my foot. But at least I didn't rip my suit.*

Other than that, I had a great swim. I was in the first pack of maybe 6-7 swimmers. I think there were 2 or 3 guys solo up ahead of us, and then our pack was next. It included the top four women overall and I ended up running up the beach as the 2nd place female, 5th overall I think? I don't know where all the fast guys were today? The girls placed 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th overall today. Girls rock. I was the only mom in that group so I won the "Mother's Division" which was pretty cool.

The best part was showing Moana off to everyone after the race. This is her 'My mommy is faster than you' look she gave to the gal who came in right behind me today. I'm going to have to teach Moana to be a better sport.

Ok this is better, Moana.

Afterward I did my usual weekend bike/run brick. It was good to do that workout after a max effort in the ocean like I had this morning. I'm ready for Honu. :)

In other good news, I PR'd a 5K yesterday morning! I was hoping to run right around 22 minutes, thought I could probably do it but wasn't quite sure... it was one of those possibly achievable goals that was still a stretch... but I crossed the line in 21:41 and was just really happy! The hard work on the track is paying off. Seriously, for a swimmer like me who has never been a good runner, to average under 7 minute pace for 3 miles is really sweet.

*By the way, I wore my Blue Seventy today because A) I wanted to try it out before Honu and B) I was curious about how much faster it would make me. I figured it would be a good test because without it I think I would have been right with Nalani, so I figured that however much I beat her by while wearing the suit would be a pretty accurate gauge of the suit's advantage. I beat Nalani by about 10 seconds today. So the suit is probably not worth it unless you need the psychological advantage.