Swim Around Key West… and wasted away in Margaritaville!

Hi all,

So 15 LOSTies did the FKCC Swim Around Key West on Saturday and we all arrived at various times.  I flew in and emailed Darren as he had arrived on an earlier flight.  I found him in the bar.  A prelude of things to come.

We met up with much of the gang at Dante’s restaurant on Friday night… everyone giddy with excitement… you know the same kind of buzz and anticipation there is in the air before a marathon or Ironman… just excited to be there.  Of course, this was a bit different, as none of us had done this race before and for most it was their first marathon swim… and meeting at a restaurant in Key West is a whole lot different environment than meeting at the expo at a mega-marathon.  A lot smaller to start with… but kind of an exotic locale and an exotic race.  This was going to be good.

As much fun as we were all planning to have in KW this weekend… we were all taking this race quite seriously… regardless of whether one was doing solo or relay, it was going to be a good solid swim for all of us!  The fun was going to have to wait until the work was done.

Darren had picked me up at my house in Toronto for the first leg of the flight at 4:30 am… so we wanted to get a good night’s sleep and were in bed by about 9:30 pm.  Separate beds… far apart… just to clarify… this is Key West afterall… not that there’s anything wrong with that.

We had all our food and gear laid out like little kids ready for their first day of school and were up at 5:30 for the 7:00 start… we hopped on our very stylish beach cruiser bikes and pedaled down to the start of the race.  None of us really knew what to expect and I just kinda wandered around and found my kayak and kayaker, Jackie.  And then saw people were starting to walk out in the water to get ready for the start… a whole pod of swimmers and kayaks standing around in 5 feet of water and then suddenly… GO!!!

My first thought… holy crap this water is warm.  Hot actually.  The hottest I’ve ever swum in.  That might have been the hardest part of the race for me… you forgot about it sometimes, but it does suck the energy out of you and makes it hard to keep a strong pace.  I took my LOST thermometer down there just so I could measure the temp on the same scale as we use for LOST… but I forgot.  But I heard it was 89F… that’s just soupy.  All you LOSTies out there know how swimming a mile or two in cold water takes a lot more out of you than in pool water… well, I’m here to tell you, hot water does too!  Although the warm water isn’t nearly as painful… and you don’t get “the claw!”

I started between Lynn and Art and we swam side by side for a ways, which was cool.  We dropped Lynn and I tried to keep up with Art… and soon Jackie (my kayaker) and were stretched out in a long line.  The water was so hot I really wanted to pace myself… but I wanted to race it too.  I may be getting modestly wiser in my old age as elected to hold back… and let Art continue on his way.

There was no shortage of things to occupy one’s mind with… which is good… it gives you lots to think about.

Let’s start with the weather.  There was supposed to be a 50% chance of severe thunder storms.  This had very little appeal to me given that the other marathon swim I did this spring was cancelled at 6 1/2 hours (Tampa Bay Marathon Swim) for the same reason.  But as it turns out we got really lucky.  Really, really lucky actually.  The weather was crazy.  Lightning and thunder only a few miles away… even a few “water spouts” (tornado’s over water)… but they stayed just far enough away.  And the even luckier part was that not only did we not get the rain and lightning… we did get overcast skies!  Nice.

Then there was the “aquatic life” to think about… or to try not to think about.  Well the story we heard was that they had tagged (for scientific purposes) a 1000 pound bull shark in the harbour the day before the race.  Turns out that was only half true… they did tag a 1000 pound bull shark… but it was 2 weeks earlier… and more importantly in wasn’t in the shallows, it was in 150 feet of water and closer to Islamorada Cay.  (Here is the link: http://www.beachmaniac.com/florida/huge-bull-shark-weighing-up-to-1000-pounds-caught-off-coast-of-florida-keys/ )  This also only had limited appeal.  So you just block stuff like that out of your mind and swim.  I was really hoping to get in the zone like I did in Tampa, where the half hour swims between feeds just slip by… I started to consciously try and do that… and get into a semi-conscious state.  And then 4 large Tarpon swam under me.  Scared the crap out me.  These were 6 feet long and 150 pounds (hey… it’s a fish story… I can make them as big as I want!)… okay they were big enough to snap me awake.

I know they aren’t dangerous, but they were big… and I was feelin’ pretty small… out there in the ocean.  About the only other aquatic life I encountered out there I never even saw.  Jellyfish.  I got stung about 6 or 8 times in 10 feet.  Oh well, breaks up the boring stretches.

Alex and Lynn had good stories too.  Alex is the ol’ wiley seadog… and he saw a couple of Tarpon swim under him… and a barracuda too… that caught his attention too!  Then he saw the only bonafied shark… a 4 or 5 foot (don’t believe him if he tells you it was any bigger) nurse shark.  Truth is it doesn’t really matter how big it is… it catches your attention.  Which brings me to Lynn and her “fish” story.  She saw a large sting ray.  Cool.  And in the section where the water got really, really shallow, I remember thinking… “well at least no self-respecting shark would be caught in water this shallow!”… which is exactly where Lynn saw her shark!  Having said that, it was exactly a monster of the deep… it was about 18 inches long!  Which had me laughing when she told me that story… but then she said she was more concerned about the mother being nearby.  Good point.  I stopped laughing.

As dramatic as the weather and aquatic life sounds… and they make for a better story… the truth is… both never really came into play.  The real problem was that it was a long, hot, tough swim.

Because we were going around the island we had all kinds of conditions.  We had some nice stretches at the beginning that were about 10 feet deep, flat and interesting.  Then a very deep area with really big waves from large boats and cruise ships.  Then there was probably the toughest stretch where we swam “up-hill” for a couple hours… the tide was going out and we were going in.  That wasn’t fun.  It tested everyone physically and mentally.  Lynn and Alex were both saying how frustrated they were at this point.  For me this was where having a bit of experience helped.  For the cyclists and runners out there that have gone on courses they’ve never been on and hit a patch of hills… for a couple of hours… you can imagine how tough it would be.  But even if you’ve never done that specific course before, but have done tough courses like that, it does give you a mental edge.  You just know how to drop into the right gear and keep plugging away.  This is where patience is the best tool you can have.  Easier said than done… but that’s what experience does for you.

After that came the best part of the race… going out with the tide!  Woohoo!  We were being sucked out of the bay into a narrow channel and under a bridge… and we were flyin’!!!  It was a great pick me up after this tough stretch of battling against the tide.  Unless you were Alex.  Alex and Darren were doing a 2 man relay… Darren had this section (all downhill)… and Alex had the first uphill part.  Sucker.

But as I was saying… we got a bit of everything.  The next part was more frustating than it was hard.  Like a river when it hits the ocean, this channel slows down… and drops all the sand and silt… and therefore becomes shallow.  Real shallow.  I was swimming along and it got to 3 feet… less the 6 inches of sea-grass at the bottom.  Then 2 feet.  But my experience taught me how to adapt.  I invented the “Kent Shallow Pull”… where it is so shallow you have to pull way across your body because you can’t pull down, so you pull sideways.  I pretty proud of my adaptative skills.  I knew it was supposed to get shallow here, but I figured I’d risk it and cut the corner short, rather than continue way out and cover a lot more distance.  I was feeling strong and thought I might be able to catch 2 swimmers that were about 100 meters ahead of me.  Then it got even  more shallow… 1 foot.  Then 6 inches.  Okay, that was ridiculous.  I was effectively beached.  I couldn’t lift my arms out of the water or it would cause my body to dip… and scratch my chest and knees on the coral bottom.   I wasn’t so proud of my brilliant strategy anymore.  I had to do some weird dog-paddle thing for a couple hundred meters to get back to the 2 foot area.  This sucked.  Dumb idea.  And I lost a lot of time that I was trying to make up. Oh well, I kept scuttling along like a crab until I could swim.

Finally I was on the home stretch.  I made the rookie mistake (some much for all my experience) and looked to see how far the big yellow buoy was… only a kilometer or so!  Woohoo, lets pick it up and race it in.  15 minutes later I looked to see if I had passed it yet.  It was still a kilometer away.  Arghh.  Frustration and exhaustion breed stupidity.  I did it again.  And again… until I was too bored to look.  And that’s when I finally got there.  Phew.

People say half joking to me “only 20k?!… that’ll be a breeze for you”.  And I’d like to think it would be something I could do without too much problem… but going back to my experience in any kind of racing… the day you start taking any serious race for granted is when you get taught a lesson in humility.  Apparently this was a tougher year than usual, but even more so than any other sport (except maybe mountain climbing) you are at the mercy of the weather… and that can be everything.  It was a tough race… but a fair race.  I was lucky and had a good day.

I don’t think anyone found it a breeze.  Art was 4th overall and first LOSTie, I think I was 5th overall and the first Master (over 25).  Art had a great race and was all smiles when I saw him after my swim… mind you he’d been there long enough before me that he had plenty of time to recover!  Great swim Art.

Lynn had a great swim, her first marathon swim ever (like almost all the other LOSTies, except for Ted and Patty!) and came in just shortly after me.  What a strong swimmer.  Guess what… she did the work all winter and some long swims with me in Lake O… and got her just rewards of a really impressive swim.  She was the first female Master.  Incidentally we all had some very uncomfortable “rubbies” from the salt water rubbing you raw under your arm… but Lynn won the prize… she had a rubbie on her right bicep that was beet red and the size of an apple… that’s what she gets for having such big pipes!

A couple of other noteworthy swims were Bud’s and Chris Palfrey.  They both are very strong swimmers… and both hobbled to the finish… both from shoulder injuries… but still managed to finish.  The pain was so bad for Bud that it was making him nauseous… and he was throwing up regularly because of it.  Ya, that’s pretty tough.  Well done boys.

A big hats off the to relay teams too… Alex & Darren… both got the bug and will be back for more!  The Oakville Irish contingent of the LOST Travel Team had a helluva day too and loved every minute of it… some more converts!  And the International LOST Travel Team, consisting of Ted from Pennsylvannia, Patty from Texas and Annelies and Stijn from Belgium, had a long day of it… especially when the tide turned on them!  There’s no helping you if the tide turns… they had to get plucked and moved… too bad, but they finished… how to stick with it you guys!

For those of you not content with a long winded story and a few pictures… here are the results too: SAKW results 2012

Cheers,

Rob

PS.  If it seems like that is only half of the story of our adventure in Key West… well it is… but some stuff that happens in Key West… stays in Key West… kinda like Alex and Darren’s “team suits” should!  Well, they get the team spirit award!  But I’ll leave the rest of the story about our adventure in Key West at that… except to say that the rest involved: a parrot, a stolen bicycle and a cat on a hot tin roof… ummm…. and a whole lot of alcohol!

A good time was had by all.