Here I am, exuding confidence, as race time drew near.
Technically, I can swim. I even took swimming lessons when I was a kid. I grew up water skiing and boating and fishing, so I was always around water. As it turns out, none of this made much of a difference in my attempt to swim a half mile as part of the Dip and Dash Dualatholon.
This picture is an example of very good photography on my wife's part. Somehow, she caught me in a pose that makes it appear like I can actually swim.
The result was so bad, I almost hate to admit it. Out of 57 competitors in the 750 meter swim, I finished 53rd. Yes, I said 53rd. Fifty-third! Good golly are you kidding me? Get this, because you can't help but laugh: Ninety three percent of the competitors finished ahead of me in the swim. LOL! 93%! Seriously, there were people in a different event, the 1500 meter swim, that finished before I did. I guess I'm just glad I can laugh about it.
Here I am back in my element on dry land.
The 5K run portion of the competition went a little better. I finished 3rd in that. I wonder if people were thinking "who is the fast guy who can't swim?". I passed 15 people during the running part of the race and seriously, I would have passed a lot more but they had already finished. Which is pathetic, but true. Here is something funny also; the guy who won it was done and playing with his kid when I started my run. I talked to this guy two weeks ago. I hope he didn't recognize me when I went by.
Here is another funny fact I realized when I was looking at the split times after the race. My swimming time for 750 meters was so slow, 27+ minutes, that if I improved by 10 minutes, yes 10 minutes, I would finish around 25th place in the swim (50th percentile). Talk about room for improvement. There were two 14 year old kids who crushed me. Ah, hello, has anyone seen my self respect.
Alright, enough of that. Here is the plan. I'm hoping to be able to compete again in this dualatholon in three weeks. My goal, if I can get into the water and swim three times before then, will be to cut 5 minutes off my finish time. I'm going to shoot for 4 minutes faster in the swim and 1 1/2 minutes faster in the transition area. My transition was a super slow 5 minutes and I would like to see that somewhere in the 3's.
So, I've got some room for improvement. It will be fun to see how quickly I can make it happen!
Why does a guy with no hair need a swimming cap? Don't get me wrong, you can pull it off. I guess that's my rendition of "just wondering"
Posted by: brian | July 03, 2008 at 06:46 AM