With the success of last years event the number of participants increased. There also appeared to be a solid core of swimmers from last year.
The good news was that my synchro swimming partner and friend, Jen was there. Yup my synchronized swimming partner!
Jen is an avid swimmer both in the pool and out. She is also a swim angel for Swim Across America's Boston Harbor relay swim. Her kind, easy going and patient personality is ideal for a swim angel and synchronized swimming.
Last year Jen and I swam in a handful of open water events together including the Misery Challenge. Wheather we started those races together or in different heats we alway seemed to finish within 60 seconds or less of each other (Jen always in the front)-synchronicity!
As this was a time trial start entering the water two by two Jen said we should go together. I happily agreed!
The water temp felt great at about 65 degrees. The tide was quite shallow to start so we had to do some swimming and walking. Once we got out into the channel it was smooth sailing. We swam side by side, in synch, with each other for 1.5 miles out to Misery Island and made the turn back to the harbor and the finish. I made a quick wardrobe change at Jen's suggestion and ditched my swim cap as it was falling off. We had some sighting issues trying to find the yellow course buoy and swam a bit astray. We found it fairly quickly and fell back in synch towards the finish.
We hit another shallow patch towards the finish and had to walk about 10 feet before final couple hundreds yards swim to the finish.
I know I swam faster because of our synchronized swimming routine and was two minutes quicker than last year. I finally had the same time as Jen!
Quaffed a post race morning Cisco beer and was off to the airport to Colorado Springs.
Thank Jen~ for being a great synchronized swimming partner!
No comments:
Post a Comment