So, on Sunday the whole family went to Camp Tallchief, which is located on a girl scout camp (Zink Ranch) just outside of Tulsa, OK, about 120 miles from our house. We were there for the Tallchief Open Water Challenge. My son has been on the swim team for two years, and doing meets for about 18 months, but this was his first open water event. I, in contrast, had never done an athletic race or event of any kind before. At age 43, this was definitely a first for me!

I'd had the worst sleep of my night the evening before; I wasn't worried about the race itself, but the logistics of getting us all there in time, given that it was in a rural location on private property at someplace we'd never been before. And we had to be there by 8 am. Plus it was a strange hotel, we were all in one room, I had pre-race jitters, etc. But we made it!

It was about 60 degrees when we reached the lake. They let us get in the lake for about half an hour of warm up before the races began. It wasn't nearly as cold or bracing as I'd anticipated. Here I am with Lemur Jr., testing the waters for our warm up:

IMG_5209 by kermyta

One thing we discovered during the warmup was that the buoys marking your distance were low, i.e. fairly close to the water, and as the sun was right behind them they were virtually invisible when you were swimming! Fortunately that was less of a problem by the time the races started and the sun had risen a bit.

After we got out of the water, we had to wait quite a while while they issued instructions, then did the 1/4 mile race, then let the 1, 2 and 3 milers start. Here are Lemur Jr. and I trying to stay warm while waiting:

IMG_5187 by kermyta

(I was a bit surprised by how many people were doing longer distances! Based on the final results, there were 11 people doing the quarter mile -- including at least three parent/child pairs; 18 of us in the half mile [my son and I were the only parent/child pair]; 60 people doing the mile; 33 doing the two mile; and 20 doing the three mile. Everyone doing one mile or more started together; the longest loop was one mile, but you just repeated it if you were doing a longer distance.)

Finally it was the half milers' turn! Here we all are at the start of the race:

IMG_5213 by kermyta


You swam 1/4 mile out, passed a buoy, and turned around and swam back. Then at the end you had to haul yourself out of the water and over some mats to register your time (the timer chip was strapped to your ankle). Here I am crossing the mats:

IMG_5219 by kermyta


Getting out of the water was slightly disorienting. You're gasping for breath, there's a volunteer wanting to take the chip off your ankle while another one is trying to give you a medal. And you're just trying to move across the mat so your time gets recorded and your clock stops ticking.

Here I am with Lemur Jr. and Lemurette (who was a terribly good sport, getting dragged across the state and out of bed really early when there was nothing in it for her):

IMG_5222 by kermyta

Here we are post-race, making sure the medals are real:

IMG_5221 by kermyta

After the race there was a pancake breakfast (the highlight of the day, so far as my daughter was concerned). Here are Lemur Jr. and I, in our rather nice race t-shirts, not long before we set out on the long drive home:

IMG_5228 by kermyta

Thoughts:

Overall I am very happy with my performance. The swim itself was no problem at all. I think on the return leg I wandered over a bit more to the left than I should have, which cost me a few seconds. But my goal was to finish in under 24 minutes. If I could manage not to be the very last person over the finish, that would be great too. And in fact I did it in 20:40 seconds -- way faster than I'd planned! And I was third out of 7 males in the 18 and older category! Whoop!!!

Lemur Jr. finished fifth out of five boys under 18, with a time of 17:21. But that's great, because a) he was hoping to finish under 19 minutes, and b) he's only 9, and everyone else was 11-13. If he sticks with the half mile for another few years, he's sure to win it!

One interesting thing: although my son is on the swim team, and thus swims about 6 hours a week in practice, he doesn't swim the half mile very often. Even though he finished over three minutes ahead of me, he was absolutely worn out, whereas I felt invigorated and ready for more. This also happened the two times we managed to do an open water practice. I, in contrast, practiced swimming a half mile(actually 0.57 miles) without stopping quite a few times before the meet. So even though he was faster than me, in some ways I feel like I was more prepared for that distance.

Also? Everyone we met was really cool. No hyper-competitiveness among the entrants. And several people offered useful advice to us as first-timers. We had some nice conversations with several people after the race as well (did I mention the pancakes?).

The motto on our shirts reads "Sight. Swim. Breathe. Repeat." Sighting is definitely the toughest part about open water swimming. There are no lines on the bottom to follow! I will have to work more on that next time.

But overall: it was awesome. We will definitely be back next year!! Hopefully we can both slice a bit off our times.

Thanks so much for the advice you guys gave me about open water swimming! One of you said that "you create your own demons in open water swimming," which I managed not to do, hopefully because I was forewarned about that. Really if I can just improve my stroke, and my sighting, I don't see why I shouldn't improve my time next year. (Though probably not enough to raise my rankings; the winner in my age group was a 58 year old man who finished nearly 7 minutes ahead of me! Second place was a 55 year old stock broker [we got to know him pretty well, chatting before and after the race] who beat me by nearly two and a half minutes. I'd like to remove a minute from my time; I'm not sure it's realistic to shoot for more.)