Austin Triahlete's Open Water Swim

Sunday was the Austin Trithlete's Open Water Swim. This is the new late-summer edition to complement the one that happens in late spring. It used to be the Austin Aquatics open water swim and was a USMS sponsored event, but AT took it over a few years back. Now it's a USA Triathlon sponsored event and this year they changed it from the more swimmer-specific distances (800M, 1 mile and 5k) to the triathlon-specific distances of 800M, 1.2 miles and 2.4 miles.

Sunday was actually cool with a threat of rain. The first cool day since early May as far as I can remember, we have a rare late-summer cold front moving in from Colorado and giving us cool weather and a chance of rain. Fortunately the weather held long enough to get the race in.

I parked outside and walked into the park. The race is held at the LCRA Mansfield Dam park. There was a bigger crowd than I expected. It looked like probably on the order of 100 people were entered in the race. I got my packet, which included a cool AT mesh bag with a zipper pocket. Cool, I already had something to show for my $33 entry fee ;-)

I had brought my Fastskin legskin just in case, but the water was really warm and I thought better of wearing it. So I just went with the standard issue speedo. Open water tends to be where I'm at my best, and if everyone else can't wear wetsuits, I'm in pretty good shape. They said that the water temperature was 88. I had debated between the 2.4 and 1.2 mile distance, but because I haven't been swimming that much, and I'm so worn down from my marathon training I decided on the shorter distance. The fact that the water was so warm made me feel better about my decision.

They started us in 4 waves. The 800 meter swimmers went first. They were going around the point and then into the cove and back. For the 1.2 and 2.4 mile swimmers, we had to go down the coastline past the cove all the way to the yellow buoy and then back. The course was marked on the way out by a series of orange buoys. The 2.4 people had to do the loop twice, we only had to do it once. After the 800M start, the 2.4 people started. Then they started the 39 and under 1.2 mile swimmers, and last my wave of 40 and over 1.2 milers.

It's nice to start in a relatively small wave. Compared to some tris, where the wave is big and I have to do my best to get up front and avoid getting clobbered. Also, with tris, I tend to go out as fast as I can for the first 100 meters or so to see if I can separate myself from the pack as quickly as possible. With open water swims, I take a little different of a approach; I don't feel the need to go out as quickly because I figure that everyone there is a decent swimmer and it's not as important to separate myself quickly.

There was an older guy next to me. He went out quickly, so I figured that if he was really that fast I'd just draft off of him. I got right on his feet and tried to draft. But there's a funny thing about drafting, when you're off to the side of someone you might have to work to keep up with them, but then you get behind their feet and after a couple of strokes you're catching them and hitting their feet. So I kept catching him; after about 50 yards of this I decided to go on past him. Either he's not fast enough or I would get tired quickly and catch him again when he came by. I didn't see him again until the finish, when he arrived about 5 minutes after me, so I guess I made the right decision.

By the first buoy at about 100 yards I was already too hot. At this point I was glad that I had chosen the 1.2 over the 2.4 swim; I'll save the 2.4 until the spring when the water is colder.

I turned the 90 degree at the first buoy and headed down the lake. After a minute or so a curious thing happened; the orange buoys were suddenly about 20 yards off to my left. I think that I do a pretty good job of sighting when swimming in open water, so I was surprised that I could have gotten this far off course in such a short period. Clearly at this point the best strategy (as always) was to just sight down the line and keep going, correcting my course slowly. After another minute or so I could see the yellow buoy at the end, so I sighted on it the rest of the way, pulling myself slowly back on course. I'm convinced that the course must have been a bit curved, and that following from orange buoy to orange buoy would actually have been a longer course than the one I took.

At any rate, being so far out kept me away from most of the other swimmers. Already at the first buoy I had started to run into the wave in front of us, and as I moved along I continued to pass other swimmers. Still it's a lot better than a triathlon, because very few swimmers are swimming the breast stroke, so you don't have to be so worried about their feet kicking you.

The race was pretty uneventful from there on. It was just hot enough to make me tired and I keep my turnover going as well as I could. Many times I though about how glad I was that I didn't have to make a second loop. Eventually I got to the yellow buoy, backstroked around it and headed home.

On the way back I continued to pass people, now mostly white caps (the 2.4 milers). I felt sorry for them. I guess I followed the buoys pretty well on the way back, but if they were bowed in this direction then there was no shortcut like on the way down. I came back to the point, turned around it and started trying to sight on the finishing chute. The water suddenly got very shallow and I had to shorten my strokes to keep from hitting the bottom. I had to correct my course out to the left back towards deep water until I could stroke fully again.

At about 100 to 75 meters out I decided that I was close enough to the end to bring up my finishing kick. When I'm trying to drop someone, especially at the end of an open water swim, I use my kick to try to do it. I can only do about a minute or two of hard swimming with a full kick, so I try to reserve it as much as possible. There were several people finishing up at this point right ahead of me, all 1.2 milers probably from the wave ahead of me. I decided to pass as many of them as I could.

I have to say that my finishing kick didn't last for too long. It got me moving, but after 30 seconds or so I started to feel sick and probably had to slow down some. I guess the combination of being out of conditioning and the hot water got the best of me. Anyway, I got to the finish and did everything I could to get to my feet and cross the mat. It's amazing how hard it is to get up and move forward on your feet after being in the water like that.

In the end, I finished in 31:58, fifth overall and good enough to take the overall master's winner. Actually there was one guy who beat me in my age group, but he turned out to be the overall winner. Results here. I got a cool Rocket Science transition backpack to show for my effort.