Um, Not Done Yet...

In my head I feel like I'm on my off-season break, and I suppose if in my head I'm on break, then really I'm on break. Except, well, I still have this little ocean swim race on Sunday. So funny how the Double RoughWater became a complete after-thought in the wake of the marathon.

It's been quite a beautiful week around here... I know so many of you on the mainland are enduring blizzards and temperatures that only need a single digit (or finger) to describe them and to you I have one thing to say... You don't have to live there if you don't want to... But moving on I'll say that while it has been beautiful here, it is not summer anymore and I think we're all gonna be quite cold swimming for 2 hours in the ocean on Sunday morning.

Last night I stayed up to watch the weather and the guy showed a map of the Pacific that showed a huge ugly dark colored mass off to the west of our island chain... and then he mentioned something about how this big storm would come in sometime Saturday night and last through Monday morning. Perfect. Storms around here mean epic things for the ocean.

I don't mind swimming in epic ocean conditions. Truth be told, I kinda like it. Swells, wind chop, currents, bring it on! I mean, if you're going to participate in a 7K ocean swim race, you better well come out with a good war story, you know? That said, it's the cold I don't like. The water is probably 75ish degrees which I know isn't THAT cold but after like 45 minutes being submerged in it without a wetsuit I do start feeling cold and sometime in the second hour I'll expect my hands to go numb (they always do). Even wearing 2 swim caps I suspect that just like last year I'll be shivering quite uncontrollably by the finish.

Scott will be paddling for me since we each need individual escorts out there. I was worried that he would be really cold b/c he's the not going to be working that hard just paddling to go my speed. Then he reminded me that he would be wearing a wetsuit. Now I'm not worried about Scott. But I probably should be worried about Moana b/c my plan is to bring her down to the beach and have a friend of mine babysit her while Scott and I are out on the water... but if it's a cold rainy day that really won't be a lot of fun for her or Lynne. Hmmmm. Not sure what to do about that. In good news, Moana is in love with her umbrella these days so maybe it'll be fun for her after all.

In the end, while I admit I have not thought a lot about this race in the past few weeks, I am confident that I will be fine out there. I really like this race. It's small- only like 40 invited swimmers did it last year. They don't advertise a lot b/c in all honesty the race directors don't want to be responsible for swimmers who are less than 100% confident being in the ocean for that long. It's more a matter of word of mouth thing and if you hear about it through your circle of local swimmer friends and you're motivated enough, you seek out the invitation somehow and get yourself in. It's so different than what we experienced last weekend with 23,000 runners from all over the world in that marathon craziness. I think this race is more my style. Come back Sunday for the low down on how it went.