So we had a very good Pier to Pier Swim! Big thanks to Greg Pace ( http://www.paceperformance.ca/ ) and the Tri Club of Burlington (TCOB, http://www.triburlington.ca/theclub.html ) for hosting the swim!
You sure can tell the end of summer is nigh… things have changed… even from yesterday! Yesterday it was over 30C… hot, hazy and humid… and just like that it changed overnight. We awoke this morning to about 18C, wind and cool. The good news is that Lake O has it’s own schedule… independant from the air temperature, so it was 70F for the LOST Swim on Saturday and about 67F for the P2P Swim this morning.
- getting Greg’s instructions…
But the air temp and the water temp weren’t the story today… it was the chop! We left the Burlington lift-bridge at about 8:30 and headed due north… for the 2.4 km to the Brant Street Pier… directly into a fairly strong wind… and fairly good chop! As Ronald said to Melanie, who swam across Lake O only a few weeks ago, “It gives a tiny taste of what you swam through!” (Melanie had about 6 hours of her 18 hours in water much, much rougher than that!). It was a pretty tough swim though, for mortals, straight into the waves like that and as the last swimmer to finish said “I set my GPS watch for 2.4 km… and it beeped a long time ago!” It’s 2.4 km… if you swim straight, that is! The waves tossed people around a fair bit and made sighting straight into the waves pretty difficult. But you just had to keep your eye on the Ribfest Tents to steer you in the right direction… a bit of a disappointment though… it wasn’t open by the time we got there!
I believe Bill S. said there was 47 swimmers that started… 41 wetsuit and 6 naked (yes, I wimped out and wore a wetsuit… I wanted to see if I could keep up with Bud… I couldn’t!)… and as a testimony to the tough conditions, not all finished… but they were all picked up and brought in very safely, most jumped out and swam the last 100m or so in to the beach. As a race director myself, although not for this swim, I have to tip my hat to a) the swimmers… for having the brains to call it quits if it’s not your day. It’s no big deal. I think about a half a dozen jumped into the zodiacs… always nice to see people using their heads and pulling the plug before there are any problems… and b) to the boaters who helped out! Without Peter A. and Mel and Bill and a few other kayakers, a swim that was very uneventful and pleasant would have been a lot more difficult… so thanks to all. Like I said this was a TCOB event, and although our LOST swimmers made up a large number of the swimmers, I wasn’t really involved… but as someone who is involved with open water swimming in Lake O, you still want to see that all swims are done properly and safely… an open water swim of any length isn’t like a running race, you can’t just walk it in… so thanks again to the swimmers for using their heads and to the boaters for volunteering to make it a fun swim!!!
Now as for the times… well, truth be told it was a “swim”, not a “race”… but… for the hardcore, we still raced it. And if you were keeping track… well, Bud Seawright won!!! Quite handily. Giving him the Southern Ontario Triple Crown for the year… The Welland 10k win, the 3.8k LOST Race win and the 2.4k P2P Swim win!!! Well done Bud!!!
I’m not sure what his time was, because as I said it wasn’t really an official race, but naturally I had to race myself… and therefore time myself, and I was 39:35… and Bud (and I believe 2 others were a few minutes ahead of me… lets just say they weren’t still breathing hard when I got there!). I did have good company though, I pulled Juan (a former Colombian National swimmer) and Chris (?) across, only to have Chris jump by me with about 50 meters to go… thanks for pushing me guys!
A few minutes after me came 3 swimmers… two women and one guy. Now the guy (turns out it was Jeff) took the scenic route and swam straight for the Ribfest tents before he noticed there was no smell coming from the BBQ’s and then decided to head over to the finish after all… which left the two ladies to battle it out! The two ladies turned out to be Jackie Smalec (who is headed off to the Half Ironman World Championship’s in Las Vegas next weekend… not to mention doing the Ironman World Championship’s in Kona, Hawaii later this fall!… good luck, by the way!) and Maisey Kent (the Oakville Aquatics Club swimmer and the fastest 1500m freestyler in the region and a National Age Group qualifier… oh, and my 16 year old daughter!)… well it was pretty tough out there… they were banging into each other… battling it out… right to the finish… not so much because they were being poor sports and trying to slow the other swimmer down… but because they both need to work a little on their sighting!!! In the end, Maisey won the title as the fastest woman!!! Congrats Maiz!
Mostly though it was just a lot of fun and a good tough swim… congrats to all, thanks for coming out for a nice dip and again thanks to Greg, TCOB and all the boaters!
PS. I’ll keep everyone posted as to whether there will be a LOST Swim next Saturday… playing it day by day at this point in the season… we’ll ride the warm water as long as we can!
Cheers,
Rob