Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Last Swimmer Standing in the 2 Bridges Swim

I was really looking forward to the start of the open water swim season. I had spent the past 9 months swimming mostly in a 25yd indoor pool at the New York Sports Club in White Plains. The excitment in participating in this open water swim event defied my reasoning and logic, and I signed up for the 5K swim!

THE COURSE
We drove up the Taconic to Poughkeepsie early that morning and as soon as we arrived I realized how accurate those satellite pictures were. The water is indeed brown and almost opaque, even from a distance. I never swam in a river before. I grew up swimming in the Atlantic Ocean near the coastal city of Casablanca, so I thought a river swim wouldn't be so bad...
PRE-RACE BRIEFING
The race director (David Barra) presents the course map: a 2.5K oval that circles the eastern stanchions of the Mid-Hudson and Walkway Over the Hudson Bridges, 900m apart. The 5K swim consists of two loops. He mentioned that the river's current was upstream! I learned that the Hudson was in fact similar to an estuary, and thus the tide is felt all the way up to Troy (120 miles north of NYC)!


RACE START
Right before the start, I set my tempo trainer: I trained really hard this past year to increase stroke rate to 1.16 down from 1.3 and am now able to sustain this pace for about 90 minutes, which to me was a real achievement...in the pool that is.
When the race officially started with a horn, we all aimed towards the first buoy before making a left turn. Many swimmers started passing me at a brisk pace and I thought that they would eventually run out of steam after the first loop. What struck me at first was how brown and opaque the water was. I knew these waters were not the most exciting to swim in, but little did I know about current conditions and suspiciously warm to cold currents traveling in these waters during the swim!

STANCHION ONE = THE PITFALL
As I was swimming towards stanchion 1, I noticed that all swimmers were on my left parallel to the shoreline and taking the first buoy near the first stanchion a bit wide, I found myself to the right of everyone else as I made my way towards stanchion 1. BIG mistake!
Surely, at about 30 meters from the stanchion I could finally see the buoy, but was fighting to swim towards it. I found myself stuck in an upstream current going around the stanchion and in the middle  of some sort of mini vortex.
I knew I needed to swim a bit harder to get away from it and join up with the pack, but I did not want to outpace my tempo trainer and needed to save some energy for later in the swim. I was effectively pitted and then it dawned on me - I have been in a similar situation before, a long time ago on my surfboard in the Atlantic...


BACK TO LATE 1980s, TROPICANA BEACH CLUB
It was the summer of '88~'89, Casablanca beach front pool clubs. We used to surf right behind the retaining walls when the tide was low. At high tide, the waves crashing on the granite walls made waterfalls spilling over the saltwater pools. An amazing spectacle of ocean fury crashing into man-made walls. However, if you find yourself in the water while tides change, you find yourself stuck in between the waves crashing and the wall. A few friends and I made that mistake once. I remember Karim B., Philippe L., Steve B., Omar F, Nasser F. and myself being in a bad spot where we would be fighting currents for over 30 minutes to get away from the wall and reach the beach area...it was a lost battle and we had no choice but to get closer to the wall and climb up it with surfboard-in-hand while waves crashed us against the wall. I do not remember who climbed that wall first, but we all eventually got out. That was probably one of the scariest moments of my life, but we were back in the water the next day. Completely irresponsible, but we were young and carefree...

Boulevard de la Corniche, Casablanca

GETTING AWAY FROM THE PIT
Being here in the Hudson in front of the stanchion felt like I was swimming in place forever - in reality, I do not think it lasted more than about 5 minutes, but it was just enough time to lose sight of the other swimmers and fall behind. My instinct was to increase my stroke rate and even use a brisk kick, but my tempo trainer was telling my brain to "stay calm, just pace yourself, you swim 3k/day this is nothing to be concerned about..." very bad advice. I still had 4K to go and did not want to run out of steam too early. I then decided to swim in a zig-zag fashion and it worked. I finally went around the buoy, then the next one and headed to the 900m stretch to the other bridge, current assisted.

FOOL ME ONCE, FOOL ME TWICE
Loop 1 completed, I now face Loop 2 to complete the swim. The same situation occured upon approach of stanchion 1, but fortunately I reacted quickly and started zig-zagging to get away from the current.

LAST STRETCH AND FINISH LINE
2 hours later, I was just getting out of the water and crossed the finish line when I got accosted by a woman holding a notepad, who started asking me all sort of questions regarding the swim and overall experience. I was getting interviewed for the local paper! (link to article here). That's when I realized that I was the last man out of the water after 2 hours and 49 seconds. I was quite embarrassed and angry at the same time! I didn't even deserve a hug from my faithful photographer (you know who you are).
EPILOGUE

I learned a few big lessons on that day:
1. Never pretend to jump from indoor pool swims to a 5K open water race overnight.
2. The key to a successful swim is to stay with the pack at all cost in the early stages of the race and not fall behind. You need to maintain a brisk pace until you reach a point where you can fall back to your usual pace speed.
3. I realized that I trained for the past 4 months to increase my stroke rate (from 1.3 to 1.16) at the expense of my form and SPL (my SPL stroke per length increase from a decent 16SPL to now 20SPL).   
4. Lastly, follow your instincts! The tempo trainer has proven to be a bad habit when one needs to adjust to the overall swim conditions.

That's all folks. One needs to be last once. When you hit the bottom, you know you can only do better from here!