Boulder Stroke and Stride

This was a 750m swim and a 5k run back in June of 2007. There is an option to do a second lap for a 1500m swim. They have these every Thursday night during the summer at the Boulder Reservoir. This was my first open water swim, first swim in my wetsuit and first multisport experience. Wish I could say everything went great.

My goal for the swim at the start was to see how fast I could go. My goal after about 200m was just to live through it. I had a bit of a panic attack after I got out into deeper water. I couldn't put my face into the water and do a crawl stroke. Every time I put my face into the water I had to lift it right back out. I finished with a modified breast stroke with my head up out of the water.

I went through an interesting thought process during this time. I started thinking about how I could return my wetsuit, get my fees back for the races I've entered, where the heck are those lifeguards, etc... After a while, when I realized I was going to make it, I started thinking about how to fix this. I need to come back to the res and do laps where I can't touch and learn to deal with it. I will come back for a couple more of these races before my first tri.
My time was 20:19.

My heartrate was sky high in transition and for the first mile of the run. Transition:2:33.

The run was fine after my hr came down a bit. Finished in 26:19. Not bad for me, I'm usually slow. It will get faster when I can train myself not to panic on the swim.

Overall, 63rd out of 100. AG 9th out of 10. But I'll get faster.


UPDATE: I did several more of these races over the summer and didn't panic on the swim. I enjoy these enough to do more next summer.