Another open water swim and what's next...

On Saturday morning, once again I got up early and drove out to Lake Lewisville for the open water swim.  Since we could choose which of the groups to join, I decided to try the intermediate/advanced group.  The water was a couple degrees warmer than two weeks ago, and it didn't feel nearly as shocking.  I'm starting to believe them when they say it will be very warm by the middle of summer.  As part of this group, we swam a triangle around two different buoys before heading back to the coach on the shoreline.  It was a bit of an initial adjustment to swimming much longer distances continuously in deeper water, and for a few moments I considered going back to the beginner group.  However, I stuck with it, calmed my breathing and got my swimming into a rhythm.  Once I got to that place, I had no problem with what we did. 

After a few warm up laps, most of our time was spent swimming in small groups with one person sighting to the buoys and the other people sighting to the leader.  We all took turns being the leader.  It was actually much easier just staying near the leader and sighting to him or her rather than looking ahead to where the buoy was.  It might be a good strategy in a race situation.

At the end of the session, the coach asked me if I came from a swimming background and what my next race was.  I told her I came from a running background and I was doing my first triathlon at the end of the month.  She said that if I could swim and run, the bike would be easy.

So, yes, a triathlon is officially my next race.  My training has been going in this direction for months, and with Boston behind me I am focusing even more on swim/bike/run.  After the training cycle leading up to Boston, I think I burned out on running all the time and I am really drawn to the more balanced approach of triathlon training. 

I selected the race I did because I wanted my first triathlon to be a bigger one -- I thought it would be more exciting and memorable.  (Our first running race in Chicago was a big event and look what that started for us).  We are going down to Austin for the CapTex Triathlon Memorial Day weekend (and even bringing Scooby along with us!).  I'm very excited -- and looking ahead to more triathlons this summer and in the future!

I'm second from the left playing with my watch -- time for a Garmin???

Group picture before the swim