So last Saturday was an awesome swim. We had 66 swimmers out… and the water was 63F… so we beat the “swimmer to temperature ratio” again! Very impressive!
After a few weeks of quite rough water, and me having to explain to people that the norm was to have flat water, we actually had flat water. Flat as a pool. I wouldn’t want it flat all the time, the waves make it fun, but don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want big waves all the time either! This was some nice swimming.
Mike laid out the 500m loop course. And we swam. Just beautiful. I went for 3 loops and was lovin’ it. In fact, I had to laugh, on the last lap I was swimming to the second buoy and my sighting was way off. I would look up and swim towards it and take a dozen strokes (there were no waves, so I didn’t think I needed to sight often!?)… but then I was way off again?! Weird. Until I noticed that Mike was pulling the buoy! He was taking the course down and I was in the zone so I didn’t even notice that the time had slipped away. You know you are enjoying your swim when you lose track of time. That happens once in the while for me in the pool, but it’s usually because my brain has gone numb. This was just nice and relaxing, in a real endless pool.
And the “Crazy Lake O” part of the story?
Well, that was when a few of us decided to get a little “scramming” in. What’s “scramming” you ask? Well it is a term I coined this week. It is a verb. It is the combination of swimming and cramming. As in “wow, we have Ironman Lake Placid in 2 weeks and I haven’t done nearly enough swimming… I guess I better start scramming. said Rob”.
So we decide to get a Wednesday morning 6:30 dip in. If you recall there was a huge windstorm on Tuesday night. I just new that with the wind we would get a “roll-over” and everyone was going to give me a hard time when we showed up at 6:30 am the next day and the water had rolled over to 50F or something.
And I was right. Well half right.
We got down there the next morning and the waves were HUGE! And the water HAD rolled over! But the thing that surprised me was that it had rolled in our favor! It had jumped from 63F on Saturday to 73F on Wednesday!!! That never happens! About as rare as getting the wind behind you on the bike… in both directions!
Well the waves were crazy, but with no cold water to worry about one could just get out there and roll around. So Darren, Eileen, Alan and I went for a couple km’s! The hardest part was getting in and out… Eileen got smoked a couple of times getting in and I got tossed up on the beach getting out! It was pretty comical!
But hey, that’s open water swimming… and that’s Lake O!
See you tomorrow.
Cheers,
Rob