Kinetic Half Ironman Swim report :)

I wish I could say that this past weekend I did the full 70.3 at Kinetic but I only did the 1.2 mile swim as part of a relay team. I wanted to do the swim to get my feet wet (haha?) before Eagleman on what a 1.2 mile swim feels like in open water since swimming is my weakest leg of triathlon. We all know how crappy my first open water swim was so I really needed a confidence booster. I had no time goal really because I had no idea how long it should take me or if I would have a panic attack and have to doggy paddle the whole thing. I know I needed to make the time cut off of 1 hour and 15 minutes because I did have a relay team that would like to do their part of the race. Man, how embarrassing if I made my team DNF because I freaked out in the water.

Whitney (who did the run part of a relay) and I woke up ass early, 4am to be exact, and headed down to Lake Anna for the 7 am race start. Since I was a relay I was the very last wave of athletes to get into the water and because I was frantically looking for my friends to wish them a great race before they tackled the whole thing, I had to rush to get my wetsuit on. Oops.

Have you ever tried to put on a wetsuit? It's hard. That is my "oh crap I have to be in the water in 5 minutes and I don't have this stupid thing on yet" face. As for Whitney's face...I don't know have an explanation for that one!

I headed down to the water and dunked myself in to get used to the temperature. I also placed myself towards the back of the pack and on the left hand side in an effort to avoid getting kicked in the effing face again. And then I looked out at the course and realized how freaking far 1.2 miles in the water looks. We were swimming half way across the lake! I freaked out a little. I am glad I had this freak out before Eagleman. I didn't have time to calm myself down before the horn went off and everyone ran down the beach and dove into the water. So, I went with the flow.

I breathed every stroke and sighted every 8 or so strokes. Sighting was kind of hard because it was foggy, so I sighted the pack of swimmers in front of me and hoped they were going in the right direction :) To my surprise I was feeling strong, not freaking out, and passing a ton of people! Before I knew it I was at the first yellow turn buoy and then the second turn buoy. Whenever I would get nervous I would drill myself on my GRE study words. What? Listen, I have a lot to balance and if I need to study while swimming, then so be it!

I am thrilled to say that I freestyled the whole thing, didn't stop at all except for a pause in my stroke to make sure I was still going the right way, I had almost no contact with other swimmers (except for the dude I elbowed in the ass...I'm sorry) and I got out of the water feeling strong. oh, and it only took me 39 minutes and 53 seconds. Not the speediest of swimmers, but I'll take it!

I spent the rest of the day screaming my face off for Emily, Emily, Katie and my other Team Z teammates.

Head over to their blogs to read their race reports...Emily (all the way to the left) PRed by 32 minutes or something crazy like that, Emily (second from left) won the 21-24 age group, me (green jacket) ate hot dogs after the swim and cheered for these girls, and Katie (right) got the finish line of her first 70.3 with a huge smile on her face screaming for dry socks. Way to go, ladies!